It all started when photographer Sol Neelman’s cousin’s wife asked him, “ ‘What do you love to do?’” When Neelman responded with “Sports, travel, photography and weird s---,” it hit him that he needed a change from shooting predictable subjects for the newspaper he was working for.

The Oregon-based photographer shot his first weird sporting event 9 years ago and never looked back. “I photographed the roller derby renaissance in Seattle and had a blast! After that, I kept looking for other fun, weird sports to shoot. Underwater hockey led to big wheel racing, which led to dog surfing and before I realized it, it had become an obsession,” he explained to weather.com.

Neelman keeps a calendar of weird sporting events that are happening around the world. His current list has 500 different events, of which he has photographed around 200.

“I always plan things out ahead of time,” he said. “If I get two weird sports in the same city, the same weekend, I always go, always!”

While he doesn’t enjoy being in bad weather, he does love shooting in it.

“[It] always offers another layer of craziness to an already crazy scene,” he said. “Being from Oregon, I love the rain and am quite used to taking photos in it. I’ll take photos anywhere and weather won’t stop me. Ideal conditions for me involve people laughing and smiling in a surreal sporting scene.”

So after years of shooting weird sporting events, which crazy game is his favorite? Kaju, a live monster-wrestling event based in Boston.

“Think Godzilla characters beating up each other with paper mache skyscrapers in a wrestling ring with the fate of Earth in the balance. It’s one of the few weird sports I’ve returned to shoot multiple times purely for my amusement.”

Neelman published his first book titled “Weird Sports” in 2011 and now has enough images to publish a second book on the subject, which he hopes to publish this year. The photographer is financing this book using the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Funding for his book closes on April 14.

To see more of Neelman’s work visit his website.