Photography Is A Serious Business

Today, buying a camera can as tough as choosing a life parter.  With so many variables to consider, we seriously have to go through rounds and rounds of decisions before buying one. 

Besides deciding which brand to go for, you need to choose the type of sensors that you want; Whether its getting that Full Frame Mark 3 to show people that you meant business or getting that Olympus PEN to Share Beautifully. After deciding on the size, you need to select the right lens so that you do not end up using a macro lens for a friend's wedding.

As if all these are not enough, you also need to embark on a learning cycle for your new gear. Even if you managed to decipher through all the various terminology like the ISO , you are still confronted by the vast amount of options on your camera menu.  

After going through the above, choosing a camera and lens and hitting the shutter button and taking the photo is only half the work done. Now you need to edit that RAW file. After hours of editing and converting to Jpeg, you also need to save it somewhere. 

It seems like a long journey and whether you shoot with your D4 for a living or you are to the weekend photographer, we know that photography can be a real serious business.

Talking about a serious photographer, Dilish Parekh of Mumbai, India has a collection of 4,425 cameras since 1977. Mr Dilish, who works as a photo journalist in India, has a huge collection of cameras made by  Leicas, Rolliflexes, Canons, Nikons, Kodaks, Zeiss and Linofs. 

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Dilish has a collection of 4,425 cameras. His earlier world record was a collection of 2,634  cameras. In other words, this camera aficionado breaks his own world record!

"Cameras are my life. I can't stay without them," said the serious photographer

Dilish started out when his father left him his personal collection of 600 cameras. Dilish found them so interesting that he decided to see if he could find some cameras that were not  in his collection. And from that day onwards,  Dilish went on adding more and more cameras to his collection until he rewrite his own Guinness World Record. It took him almost 30 years for this amazing feat.

Besides our friend from India, Thurman Jack Naylor is another serious human being who has been able to experience the essence of photography through his super huge collection of cameras.

Naylor's  inventory was an impressive collection of camera gear that any photographer would drool over.  His collection ranges from unique and extremely rare items, such as  of spy cameras, pre photographic equipment to a staggering collection of photographic related books and signed photographs. 

Since the 1950s, Naylor began his collection.  Over the course of more than 50 years he collected many thousands of items, a collection that has described as "indisputably the most comprehensive one in the world."” and termed as a complete history of photography.

In November 26th, 2007 Naylor died in his sleep from complications of spinal cancer.

So let us pay our tribute to this two extraordinary gentlemen and start to take photography a bit more seriously.