KEY POINTS:
He could be the world's unluckiest - or most brainless - thief.
When the man in this photograph made off with a security camera from the carpark of a Newmarket dental surgery, it is unlikely he realised the device was fitted with infrared, for night vision.
He was also probably ignorant of the fact that camera owner John Burford is the father of a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and himself an enthusiastic amateur snapper.
With just a little improvement of the image on computer, Dr Burford had a workable set of images to pass on to the police.
His daughter, Melanie Burford, was one of eight Dallas Morning News photographers to win a Pulitzer for coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Dr Burford entered this photograph in the Herald's holiday photo competition.
The camera - valued at "several hundreds of dollars" - was stolen from his Alpers Ave surgery in the early hours of last Saturday morning, barely 12 hours after it was installed.
Dr Burford believes the theft could have been an inside job, as the camera cannot be seen from the street and someone would have to have told the culprit it was there.
"He walked straight into the carpark, went straight to the camera, and took it. He obviously knew the camera was there ... He didn't look at anything else, he walked straight around the back of the building."
There was no attempt to break into the surgery, Dr Burford said.
The camera has since been replaced, and fixed in a higher position, out of harm's way.
Given police workloads, Dr Burford is not confident of the thief being apprehended but will pass on the photographs to investigators - just in case the face rings some bells with members of the public.
"There's no way someone's not going to recognise him."
