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View Poll Results: Would you carry a camera to take photos at a funeral?
Yes 813.79%
No 3865.52%
Maybe 1118.97%
Undecided 11.72%
Voters: 58. You may not vote on this poll

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02-13-2012, 06:01 AM   #31
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I have done it once on the request of the closest relatives of the deceased. It was a very stressful and emotionally hard thing to do.
I certainly can't imagine doing it often. Probably would require someone with a very appropriate mindset.
Pulling a camera out on a funeral without a specific request is not something I could do without feeling like I would be jumping on the lid of the coffin or someting like that.

02-13-2012, 04:26 PM   #32
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All depends on the circumstances....as has been noted. If you are going down the road and see a funeral procession and say to yourself......"Let's go shoot a funeral" then you don't understand circumstances, but may get better acquainted with your own funeral pretty fast.......and undoubtedly some other idiot will be along to shoot it too. There seems to be no shortage of idiots in this world.
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02-13-2012, 04:48 PM   #33
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02-13-2012, 06:46 PM   #34
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The lesson here: Attitudes vary. Not all funerals are solemn; not all solemn rituals demand that they not be recorded. Some funerals become political events; some become celebrations. We have no hard and fast rules amidst all this planet's cultures. The moral: Go with the flow.

02-14-2012, 02:16 AM   #35
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The most chilling set of photos I have ever seen was in 1985. I visited an old lady with one of my classmates in the mid-North of South Australia. After talking in the kitchen of the farmhouse for a long time she showed us into the formal dining room, which was kept dark. The picture rail was lined with the portraits of her brothers in WWI uniforms. They were the typical soldier protraits taken before departure. And all, or almost all, had a framed certificate beside them, signed by the king, on the occasion of their being killed in action. These were not death pictures, but they were the nearest this lady had to their funeral because the tradition was that Australians were buried at the field where they fell. Things like this are best seen and remembered, not photographed, becaseu no photograph could capture the feeling of being there,since any picture abstracts the visible from the whole experience. At a funeral we can capture sad people, but not the power of the rememberance of the departed nor the worship of the event. Somethings are not possible to convey by photographs.
02-14-2012, 04:03 AM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by Arpe Quote
I was asked to take photos at my niece's funeral. I felt awkward not to mention emotional, but did it as I had been asked by her Mum and Dad. That was a couple of years ago. They haven't seen the photos yet, but asked me to do it in case they ever wanted to see them in the future. I would only do it if asked to.
QuoteOriginally posted by procyon Quote
I have done it once on the request of the closest relatives of the deceased. It was a very stressful and emotionally hard thing to do.
I certainly can't imagine doing it often. Probably would require someone with a very appropriate mindset.
Pulling a camera out on a funeral without a specific request is not something I could do without feeling like I would be jumping on the lid of the coffin or someting like that.
I would refuse to take pictures of a funeral even if asked. My son died at age 16 from cystic fibrosis, a terminal lung disease. That was 18 years ago and even now, my wife and i have never had a desire to go look at old pictures or video of him, its just too damn painful. I even have his voice on a tape when he came back from camp one summer. Never will listen to it. Get over it you perhaps say - i say there are some things you will never get "over".
02-14-2012, 04:23 PM   #37
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So the Mum and Dad ask me to take photos at their daughter's funeral and I should say no? I felt like helping them at the time strangely enough.

02-14-2012, 05:27 PM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by Arpe Quote
So the Mum and Dad ask me to take photos at their daughter's funeral and I should say no? I felt like helping them at the time strangely enough.
Grief is a deeply personal issue and as somebody else said - varies between cultures. I can only speak for myself. I hope I would have told them that photographing a funeral feels like i'm violating someone's privacy, but that i would try to find someone else to do it for them, if they insisted. (without time to think about it, i probably would have taken the pics like you did )

After the camera was invented, apparently the most requested service was to take pictures of dead relatives that were posed in some way. Thankfully, we don't do that anymore, as far as i know.

Last edited by philbaum; 02-14-2012 at 05:32 PM.
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