Playing with Photography

I'd like to share, and this is kind of way for me to keep notes...
So I am trying to figure out how to take pictures of things that are in motion. Here is what I got: I am in love by the way!
This the original photo
This is after I edited with Adobe Light Room. I cropped and changed contrast and highlights and such.It is so much fun figuring this out. I am still not sure about how to do the sports type photos. I found that these water photos require high shutter speed and a lot of light. Here are a couple of examples of the experiment.
These are basically the same "pose."I used an external flash (lots-o-light) and a high shutter speed (1/200 sec), because my camera was set for Shutter Speed priority (I make the shutter speed changes) it, the camera, adjusts the Aperture (in this case it was f/5.6) accordingly....still learning all this stuff.This one I used same kind of light and a slower shutter speed (0.6
sec), aperture automatically set at f/25. See the big difference? The background more clear in the 2nd photo. I think it is because the aperture setting is higher, more light is being allowed into the lens, and the actual hole is larger, so it focuses on more...even though I know the slower shutter speed, that I adjusted, should have allowed for more light....anyhow. Here are a couple more various photos of the water...hope you enjoy my chatter. These pictures are clickable thumbnails so you can see larger versions of them if you click on em. Thanks for looking!