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

Ophthalmologist Shoot

I started seeing my new Ophthalmologist, Dr. Fung about a year or less ago. The first time I saw him, he asked the usual questions and about what I do. I told him that I am a photographer, showed him my business card, asked him to visit my website, etc. He seemed impressed with what I had to tell him. Yadda, yadda, the usual doctor/patient small talk you'd encounter when you visit your doctor. That's what I thought at the time. About a month ago, I received a phone call from Dr. Fung himself. Not his receptionist. I was worried for a minute. No, it wasn't to schedule an appointment nor telling me that I'll go blind in 3 days. He's interested for me to help design his website and have a photoshoot of his 3 offices around the Silicon Valley and headshot of him and his wife. Hi s wife, Dr. Lien Nguyen is also a Ophthalmologist, graduated from Harvard School of Medicine, no less. We scheduled it for Oct 29th, 2006 but it got postponed a week later, due to time conflict to Nov 5th. I met Dr. Fung and Dr. Nguyen in Dynasty for lunch. They bought me lunch. It was good dim sum! We then adjourned to their offices in San Jose off King Rd. Ran through various shooting condition, mix lightings, headshots, office shots, gosh, you name it. Almost did the unthinkable of putting them next to the optometry equipment. I was lectured to differenciate Ophthalmologists from Optometrists. So, instead of shooting them next to the popular lens testing device, I shot them in their Operating Room with operating lights shining directly at the camera. Really cool, no? Check out their images here! - Michael Soo