In 1995 I photographed Oprah for the very first time. It was my third celebrity cover and a very important cover shoot for my client, Essence magazine. During the start of the photo shoot her beautiful brown cocker spaniel puppies were on the set. She just received the pup's as a gift from Stedman and was excited to have them around her. I took one polaroid of her with the puppies and then they were taken away. The shoot went amazingly well and I love those images to this day.
A few days after the photo shoot I was looking over some of the polaroids and feel in love with the one of Oprah and her puppies. I decided to frame it and send it to her. I went shopping in New York's Soho district to search for the perfect frame, then framed the polaroid and sent it off. I guess I hoped I would receive a reply, because I thought it was an incredible image, but I never heard a word and wondered it she even received the image.
Fast forward to 2012, and hundreds of covers later, I find myself photographing Oprah again for another magazine cover. She walks in and come to me and gives me a big hug! Over the years we've worked together from time-to-time, but I have never received such a strong hug from her before. After hugging me, she looked at me and said, "years ago, you sent a picture after one of our shoots. The polaroid was of me with my dogs when they were puppies and that polaroid has been beside my bed ever since. Last week one of my babies past away so now that polaroid is more precious than ever. Thank you!"
The beauty of photography is that each image become more precious as time goes by. The images you take today may seem like nothing special, but tomorrow they will be more precious than gold.
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Oprah by Matthew Jordan Smith Copyright Matthew Jordan Smith © All Rights Reserved