Sports photography is a fairly popular discipline, but it’s also demanding. It’s basically reportage in which you have to be able to deal with very fast motion. Meanwhile, each sport has its specifics. But there are still general recommendations you can apply when photographing practically any sport. Get to know them.

Many photographers try to freeze the motion in their pictures perfectly, but sometimes it pays to make exceptions here. Motion photography can be more creative than that. You just have to put motion blurring to work in your favor. Take a look at how to photograph motion in three genres where blurring can be an advantage.

Metropolises are more than just streets lined with glass and steel skyscrapers—they’re also living organisms full of endless motion and commotion. Almost never-ending streams of cars flow through the streets—the urban arteries—and human figures rush by on the sidewalks. Motion is the city’s essence. And you can express it in your pictures using a fairly simple technique—blurring the picture.

The first successful photograph of motion was taken by photographer and inventor Eadweard Muybridge in 1878, using a technique called chronophotography. This was part of his study called “The Horse in Motion.” In this article we’d like to talk about how to freeze motion, and also how to highlight it by blurring certain parts of a picture.

Panning is a technique that photographers use to emphasize motion. They follow a moving object with their camera, and press the trigger at just the right moment. This keeps the photo’s main subject sharp, while blurring its surroundings. That’s nice when you can manage it... but what if you need to fake it after the shot? Read on to find out!