To make a long story short, it started when I was in my 20s trying to shoot high speed indoor sports with a variable aperture zoom lens. Despite my not unsurprising lack of basic photographic knowledge, I managed to have a few successes mixed in with the huge number of failures. I periodically dabbled in photography over the ensuing years, but finally began taking it more seriously when my youngest daughter started showing an interest in sports in high school - two decades later.
It didn't take long to figure out that my knowledge of photography was more than simply limited - it had enormous, gaping, yawning gaps. Black holes. After partially plugging the most egregious holes I determined that while my equipment was adequate in some situations, it was quite inadequate in others, notably sports photography (high speed/low light - the brain/eye combination is incomparably superior to the camera/lens combination). So I invested both time and money in an effort to take better photos of her and her teammates. After seeing the initial results she prodded me to take pictures of her friends on other teams. Then I suddenly found I had an ulterior motive to take pictures at the football games. Then she persuaded me to take pictures at homecoming, etc. So eventually I dug out my old college physics text on optics, read a photography book or two, separated the wheat from the chaff on the internet, practiced my technique, failed, tried again, failed, tried again...
After a few years I was able produce images which I was not entirely ashamed of, not only of sports but other subjects as well. Virtually all of my travels now involve photography, whether it's a dedicated photography trip to Yosemite, a casual vacation in St. Lucia, or a simple early morning walk through my wife's flower gardens.
Regarding the sports photography I do for South River, it's fun (up to a point). After an event I process the images real quick and put them up on the web for the athletes, parents, and coaches. I don't do any in-depth processing of an image unless someone wants a print, so I'm not claiming that any of these small jpegs are exceptional, although a great many of the original files can produce exceptional images.
By the end of a season I'm worn out. Just plain tired of lugging a bunch of equipment around to various fields and especially gyms, where there's more setup and teardown involved (I normally use strobes indoors).
When I was younger I used to compete in triathlons and other sports, so I knew the type of effort and sacrifices that the athletes made. When I became a parent I began to understand the kind of sacrifices parents and coaches make.
So - I began taking photograhy seriously when my daughter started playing sports in high school. Was it worth it, you ask? Well, her team won the Maryland Class 4A championship in 2004, and despite my relatively limited skills and equipment at the time, I cherish those photos greatly. I would cherish them even if they lost. During some of the games, especially the semifinal and final, it was amazing how cool the girls were and how stressed the parents were - both games were very close, and without a phenomenal performance by their goalie in the championship game they would not have won. I guess it's easier to play than to watch.
Enjoy.