âIt will probably be mentioned in my obituary. ÂPeople may remember it when Iâm dead and gone,â he said. Mr OâRear spent 25 years travelling the world as a photographer for National Geographic magazine but knows that this will always be his most famous work. âI always thought it was part of Tellytubbyland,â said another. âI used to drive past that hill all the time! I must have blown past it dozens of times and never once noticed it,â said one. The vineyard seen in the picture was blighted by the devastating phylloxera bug in the early 1990s â so all the vines were temporarily removed, revealing the rolling pastures of OâRearâs photo.Ĭalifornian bloggers were shocked when the true location was revealed. Second only, in fact, to the amount paid for the photo of then-president Bill Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky. But he did admit it was an âextraordinaryâ amount of money â the second-largest sum ever paid to a living, working photographer. I think every corner of the globe, every culture, every country, has been exposed to it.âĪs for just how much Microsoft paid him for the picture, heâs keeping quiet. The original photograph was taken of a hill in Napa, California on June 24th, 1996, by photographer American photographer Charles O’Rear. ÂIâm sure the Kremlin computers have this photo,â he joked. Microsoft XP Bliss Wallpaper refers to edits and parodies made to the image of a rolling green hill and a blue sky that acts at the default Microsoft XP wallpaper.