If you want to capture the speed of a moving object in its moment of graceful movement than the best way is to have motion blur in your photograph. Capturing motion blur requires a lot of proficiency and experience, hence it is an extremely difficult discipline for photographers. To give a brief insight into capturing motion blur, it s necessary to know that there are two kinds of motion blur that you can obtain in your photograph.

The first kind of blur is the kind achieved in the photograph on your left. In this photograph the athlete is at high speed and in focus whereas the surroundings are blurred and out of focus. This is called the Motion Blur of the background and requires the technique of Panning. To achieve a photograph like this you need to keep the following tips in mind-

dok21. Focus your camera on the moving object; keep a deep depth of focus as the object is constantly moving and the focus is likely to change.
2. Keep the camera on a high shutter speed and place it on a tripod to avoid any jerks
3. To blur the surroundings, pan the camera along with the moving object and click while panning, do not stop and click because then the effect will be reversed.

The second kind of motion blur is the one in which the object in motion is blurred and the still objects or the surroundings are in focus. As you can see in the picture of the moving car to your left. Achieving such results you requires the photographer to do the opposite of what was done in the first case. Keep a low shutter speed, usually lower than 1/60th of a second and keep the camera absolutely static and stable.

Capturing motion blur is an art and you need to choose which kind of motion blur amongst the two will add that extra edge to your photograph.