I just documented my wife’s granny cremation ceremony.

It was a tough call. The atmosphere was gloomy and people were crying. Some of them cried histerically every couple of minutes. My mother-in-law could not stop weeping. You see, this granny was close to the family.

The frames, the emotions, the faces, they were begging me to shoot them. As you all can see from my work, I love photojournalism. But I hesitated pushing my shutter many times. I thought, am I being an inconsiderate man? These people are in grief. Why should I even shoot this? For my portfolio? Is there a justification in shooting someone crying? People want to remember the good times, but the bad? I felt uneasy. I mean, I shot many tears in my job, but those are of joy, these are of sorrow.

Before the ceremony began, a family member even approached me and said, “Don’t take too many pictures. This is a saddening event. We don’t want remember much about this.”

So even there’s so much to shoot around me, I ended up pointing the lens down, since I don’t have the courage to even counter my own conscience. As I stand there, my mind thought about the real photojournalists who take pictures in times of sorrow, times of war, times of despair. I remembered pictures I used to see in National Geographics magazines: A father carrying his bloody son after a bomb explosion, a mother feeding his deformed child, a husband taking care of his cancer stricken wife.

Then it hit me: this is what a real photojournalist do: They tell stories as it is with their images.

Be it of joy, anger, sorrow, and even death. They bring images out from the corners of the earth, from the deepest wall of secrets. The elements in the frame might not be perfect, but again, they tell it as it is. If I can take great pictures right there and then, telling stories that will benefit the family, all the while without offending them, I might be worthy of the title ‘photojournalist’. A little disclaimer. I have so much respect for photojournalists out there in the field, shooting tough issues and difficult times, doing work that often involved going undercover for a year just to get one story. Me? I shot people smiling in an air-conditioned ballroom and call myself a photojournalist *ironic grin*

Another thought hit me when I took a group picture of the family in front of the casket. All of them were crying, and I don’t have the heart to say, “look over here!” I mean, I do *a lot* of those ‘look over here’ thingie on my weddings. So the feeling of not being able to do the thing I used to do for group portraits is kinda surreal. These thoughts kinda cemented a small ‘revolution’ on my way of shooting that I’m planning to do on my weddings, starting 2011.

I will of course write about it here, but for the sake of not making too long of a blogpost, I will end this one with a thought:

“In Indonesia people are married by getting their pictures done.”

I hope to change that to:

“In Indonesia people are getting married by doing beautiful traditions and ceremonieswith lots of emotions and meaning. There’s also some people there to document it.”

To be continued.