Sometimes, in photography, I visualize an alternate version of my camera object—that is to say, my physical camera (Ricoh, iPhone) and/or my application camera (NOMO RAW). I do this for roughly the same reason as you name your camera or car—to provide personality and to help provide ways to think about the thing. It's like conceptual/visual handles on an object that was originally too smooth to hold
I used to take pictures with a Ricoh. This camera's physical housing is a gray box like many others. But I imagined it as a party box covered in reflective pink sparkles which hung from a charm chain around my neck. The real camera sat in my pocket. The conceptual camera swung from a chain around my neck. When I reached for the camera, I grasped the party box at center chest and snapped a picture
Thinking of the camera this way changed the way I saw what I was doing
My current camera is the NOMO CAM app on iPhone. My concept for this camera is as seen from a point of view within the room where the camera fires. The room is completely dark. When I snap the shutter, a 35mm proportioned frame unfolds from nothingness in the darkness. Inside the nothingness is a magnesium bright, fizzing boiling searing light which collects information from everything captured by the frame. Then, the frame closes, sealing its world of light forever away from the darkness of the room
Thinking this way doesn't directly alter the look of the pictures I'll be taking. But it does change how I look at taking pictures. And it changes how I look at the hero of the picture taker. Would I do this exercise if I wasn't schizophrenic? Maybe. I am glad I do it, though—creating some mythology like this is part of the fun of life