Your bowler’s seriousness is something entirely distinct from what most amateur photographers do. He clearly practices bowling as a discipline. He is not interested in performance, per se, but in the process itself. This is why he seems so admirable: he is interested in bowling as a practice, not in bowling balls or even bowling scores.

A better analogy to photography, I think, is automobiles. Many people love cars and collect them, but they will never be professional drivers. They may not even be interested in driving their cars particularly fast. They love cars as cars, not as some proxy for being “drivers”. And they don’t have to pretend that owning an expensive sports car will make them a better driver. They can simply enjoy the car for what it is.

It would be nice if the love of cameras could be accepted for what it is — as something that sometimes exists alongside a true creative passion, and sometimes not.

On a related note, Miles Davis in his biography relates how he left Julliard after only one year thinking there was not much for him to learn there, but later understanding that having at least learned to read musical notes (something which not many jazz musicians of the time could do) gave him the structural tools against which he then could start his higher artistical searching through improvisation. Knowing the basic tools in fact made him a better and more free improvisor, breaking out of the box and rebelling against the structure, so he argues.

but anyway, the parallels between bowling and photography are definitely there. well done.