My mother got me into it when I was a kid. She was a visual arts major and always tried to be a professional artist, but only had limited success. She was a secretary by career, with one exception: There was a two-year period in which she was the sole staff photographer for La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad, California.
Back in the 70s, La Costa was THE place to be if you were a celebrity, and my mom lucked into the job. It didn't pay very well but it was full time and she got to keep the perpetual rights to all the photos. She shot Clint Eastwood, Lucille Ball, Robert Redford, Buddy Hacket, and anybody else who was an A-list celebrity. My sister and I still have boxes and boxes of negatives and prints from those days. She even took a photo of Dustin Hoffman and his father at one of La Costa's golf tournaments and it was in the film Tootsie. My mother spotted it, wrote to Hoffman, and they agreed on one thousand dollars (my mom bought me a new surfboard with some of the money).
I got to meet most of them. I was between the ages of 6 and 8, so most of my memories of particular stars are vague, but I remember OJ Simpson (got his autograph), Jimmy Conner (the tennis player), Warren Beatty (gave me $30, which was the most I'd ever had at the time), and a couple others. I never met Desi Arnez, but my mother was hired by him to do some extra work on the side. She has a lot of pictures of him, his wife (Lucy), and their two children.
My mom was very sensitive and didn't handle criticism very well. She was supposed to wear a staff blazer when she took photos but she didn't like that look. She wanted to move among the celebrities and kind of be WITH them instead of being seen as a staff member, but that didn't work out well because the country club obviously wanted their staff dressed appropriately, and then the celebrities were put off a few times having their pictures taken up close by a random person (since they couldn't identify her as staff). Both Michael Landon (Little House on the Prairie) and Bill Cosby insulted her because they thought she was paparazzi. They both told her, "Get a real job."
She quit the job (she quit a lot of jobs) and moved on.
But she never stopped taking pictures. She was a really good photographer and had a natural ability that I didn't inherit. She knew light and won a few awards along the way. She got paid for private jobs occasionally, including one by Jane Fonda (my mother wouldn't cash the check because she was very proud of it...I guess the money wasn't enough to lose the symbolic meaning).
Years later my mother got a job in her field of visual arts as the art director for a big medical company. She was doing well and making good money putting together their advertisements and newsletters. That was for about three years, and it was one of the rare times in which we had plenty (good car, plenty of food, decent clothing, etc.), but then she quit that job too because her boss moved on and her new boss was younger and more modern. My mother was put off by that because the new boss wanted my mom to take classes (on the company's dime) to update her skills.
My mother was really upset by this (which I didn't understand). My mom liked the old system of cutting and pasting onto those large boards with the graph-paper lines. But the boss wanted my mother to start using Photoshop, Publisher, etc. My mother should have taken the classes. Instead she quit and went back to being a secretary for about ten years until she died.
Her love of photography transferred to me, especially during the time she was the art director for the medical company (I-Med). She got lots of free gear and would give me free rolls of Kodachrome 64 and Kodachrome 25. I would shoot, give her the rolls, and she would process them.
This was in the mid-80s, and I spent most of my time shooting professional skating. I went to high school with Tony Hawk (we're still FB friends although I never see him anymore) and back in the mid-80s pro skating was cool, but there was hardly any money in it.
I used to go to the Del Mar Skate Ranch (where Hawk skated every single day and night) and take pictures. I stunk at it then and still stink at photography, but I guess I'm hopelessly addicted to it).
This is a shot I took back in the day. This was in 1986 or 87. I don't even know who those guys are, but they were the best of the best at that time. Hawk may or may not be in the photos. I asked him to help me identify the skaters in my pics, but he's busy and hasn't responded yet.
Now I spend 95% of my photography time on kids (I'm a teacher), and Southern landscapes and architecture. I very, very rarely shoot sports of any kind. The only sport I shoot is surfing when I'm on a coast.
This is a backlit photo of eleven-time world champion Kelly Slater from a couple years ago. I love surf photography, but other sports just don't interest me (for photography).
Today I'll be taking photos in Senoia, Georgia, the town where they film The Walking Dead.
This is one I took there last year. I gave the photo to the tavern (see the sign on the wall) and they sent me a gift card. So I might stop in for a beer and a burger while shooting today.
Thank you. 
