The art of motion blur

If you want to add grace and flow to your action shots there are only two words to remember – slowly, slowly

Purists often dismiss blurred photos as failures. But there’s a big difference between accidental blur and intentional motion blur that captures a sense of movement.

Ernst Haas was a pioneer of creative blur, using it to produce amazing shots of bullfighting – those images are still revered today, even though he’s long dead and they were shot decades ago. What makes them so effective is that you could almost be there, experiencing the tension and excitement. They capture the grace of the bull and matador moving together as one. A high shutter speed would have killed that stone dead, in the same way that electronic fl ash kills the atmosphere of available light. The result? Sterile, lifeless images with all sense of movement lost.

Slowing down

By slowing down the shutter speed, however, it’s a different story. Blur is introduced and the subject comes to life. How much blur depends on the subject and the effect you want. A little will add a sense of movement, a lot and you enter the realms of abstract photography where the subject is hard to identify and the idea of motion takes centre stage.

The main factors you need to consider are how fast your subject is moving, the direction it’s moving in relation to the camera, how big it is in the frame and the shutter speed you use. For example, to freeze a jogger running across your path, you’ll need to shoot at 1/250 sec. Drop that to 1/60 sec and you’ll record a little blur. Drop the speed to 1/8 sec and you’ll capture a lot of blur. Shoot on 1/2 sec and the jogger will be a smudge. As subject speed increases, so you can record blur at higher shutter speeds. The key is to experiment. Try different shutter speeds on different subjects and gradually you’ll get to know which shutter speed will give you the effect you want.

And don’t be afraid to work on really slow speeds – 1/2 sec or longer – to create more abstract effects. As you can see, it works.

Match your shutter spped to your subject

To show how important shutter speed choice is in recording motion, we shot cars travelling under a motorway flyover using a range of shutter speed. Here's what happened.

Not a hit of blur here, but the car looks static - might as well have been.

Even though this van is filling the frame, it's still practically frozen at 1/1000 sec.

At 1/500 sec there's slight blur visible in this red car. Obviously in a hurry.

Dropping the speed to 1/250 sec has increased the amount of visible blur considerably.

1/60 sec was too slow to freeze all movement but too fast to record decent blur.

There's more blur visible now at 1/30 sec, but still not enough to create drama.

This is perhaps the most dramatic frame of all - that blur adds real impact.

There's just too much blur here - the subject is hardly recognisable.

Slow down even further and the subject records as a mere smudge!