Photography tips to capture motion & action

The world around us is in motion, some are moving fast whereas other are slow. There is a little motion in everything around us. The slow moving things like plants, snails and tortoise and the fast moving things like a car or a motor bike. A photographer strives through to capture all the details of these moving things and display it in their photos. Like those professional photographers, we too want to capture those movements and actions to compose a creative picture. The process of capturing this movement and motion is called action photography.There are basically two ways to photograph motion and action. And that is 'Blurring motion' and 'Freezing motion.

Blurring motion or 'Motion blur' is the method where the action is blurred. Any object moving with respect to the camera will look blurred or smeared along the direction of relative motion. This smearing may occur on an object that is moving or on a static background if the camera is moving. You can achieve this effect in a usual scene using slow shutter speeds. Photographers around the world use this effect or technique to simulate speed, motion or action. Many people find this effect very creative but difficult to achieve.

Freezing Motion is used when the motion or the movement is obvious and there's no need to display it. Like a flying bird, the motion is obvious. Or when the pitcher is pitching a baseball, the motion of the arm is obvious. The motion freezing technique is often used in sports photography.