Duy's Funeral - Spangler Mortuary, Los Altos

My father passed away five months ago. Guilt flowed through me as the funeral was in Malaysia and I couldn't fly back in time to attend it. My brothers took the time to photograph the funeral and sent me the images. When I first saw those photographs, a flow of overwhelming emotions passed me and I was drenched in tears.

I have never photographed a funeral before. The thought of photographing one was never something that made me feel splendidly excited about, for obvious reasons. Last week, my ophthalmologist that I shot a year or so ago, Dr. Barry Fung of Los Altos wanted my help to retouch, repair and extract an image of his father-in-law from their archive for the funeral.

Soon after, my assignment was to photograph the funeral itself, held at Spangler Mortuary in Los Altos. The slideshow I created for Dr Fung made everyone cried and yes, my mindset towards photographing funeral did change after the event and especially so after reading what Dr Barry wrote below. I guess Capture the Love seem to capture an deeper word of love in it. Not very different than how one love one's spouse but a much more profound love, existing within us, towards our fathers, daughters, friends, neighbors and even our pets.

View the slideshow!

Hi Michael:

I was just thinking about what you said about doing wedding shoots. Obviously, it's more fun to do weddings than to do funerals. However, I would argue that the pictures from a funeral may have a far more important function than those from a wedding. If one's life is like a book, then a wedding is just one page of many more pages and chapters that are to come in one's life....

One's death is the coda or last page of that book - there will be no more life pages forthcoming. That is why it is so important to record the funeral. That is why it is also a time of high emotions, and why pictures can have such a profound effect on loved ones. The pictures therefore serve a much more important function than to just preserve a memory.

How do I know? Well, they say one picture is worth 10,000 words, so just have a look at this picture I am sending you. It was taken when we were at the temple this morning performing the last rites, and I was showing the monk and the family your slide show. Look at the faces and see what impact your photos are having on the people behind the faces. And to think that most of the people in the picture have already seen the slide show the day before! There is no doubt in my mind that you performed a function way more important than just being a photographer that day. Thanks again, Michael.

Regards,
Dr. Barry Fung