The Day – Ever want to jump into your screensaver? These are the destinations behind them.

Chuck O’Rear was driving through California wine country to visit his girlfriend, as he did every Friday, and scanning for possible pictures for his stock-photo service, as always. “We just never know,” he and his business partner figured, and so O’Rear’s camera went with him.

At some point on that trip in January 1996, O’Rear was struck by the scene of a rolling green hill and stopped the car. He snapped a shot. “Yeah, OK. That’s an OK picture,” he remembers thinking.

That “OK picture” went on to be acquired by Microsoft, named “Bliss” and beamed onto millions of computer screens in 2001, as the default background image for Windows XP. It is now, by a number of outlets’ guesstimates, the most-viewed photograph of all time.

“It’s got to be over a billion people who have seen it,” O’Rear, now retired and living in North Carolina, said on a recent phone call. “I’ve seen it on…