Olympic photographers are taking blurry photos! They used these four techniques to turn sport into art with motion blur

Traditional sports photography freezes a moment in time with a fast shutter speed. But a number of photographers with a coveted gig covering the 2026 Winter Olympics are taking blurry photos – and they are stunning.

Watching the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games, I couldn’t help but think that the events feel like both athleticism and art. The way that the figure skaters, skiers and athletes move celebrates sport as well as shapes, colors and composition.

Photographs can’t capture motion like videos can. But by blurring movement, photographers are creating a sense of motion – the shape and pattern created by the athlete’s body, the speed at which an athlete moves – in a single still image.

Don’t get me wrong, using motion blur is a technique that’s best used sparingly – and there are a number of fantastic, tack-sharp images coming from the Winter Games. But, I’m finding inspiration in these blurry images – which use a handful of different techniques – that create art from motion.

Panning

While sharp photos feel standard in sports photography, panning is a long-standing technique for sports photographers, particularly for events with predictable, track-based motion. For this technique, photographers use a slower shutter speed, but match the motion of the athletes with the camera.

Tracking the motion with the camera helps keep the athlete somewhat sharp while the background becomes a streak of motion blur. The entire athlete, of course, won’t be sharp.

In this shot of short track speed skating by Tim Clayton, the slow shutter – 1/6 second on the Canon EOS R6 Mark II – highlights the repetitive movement of the skater’s arms and legs. The final result is an image that helps convey the sense of motion and speed of these athletes.

Shutter drag

A flash’s brief burst of light can actually act like a second shutter speed of sorts. The flash’s intense, short burst of light freezes motion much in the way that a fast shutter does. But mix that short flash burst with a slow shutter speed, and you get a photo that is both sharp and blurred in the same frame.

This technique is called shutter drag. The motion during the flash duration is frozen, but the motion while the shutter remains open becomes blur, creating that mix of blur and sharpness.

The featured shot at the top of this article by Alex Slitz is sharp enough to see the concentration and expression on ski jumper Josphine Pagnier’s face, but leaves a colorful blur depicting her movement. This shot was taken with a 1/6 sec shutter speed at f/7.1 and ISO160 on the Canon EOS R6 Mark II.

Fire the flash more than once in the image’s duration, and the motion can be frozen more than once – which is what I suspect is happening with the shot by Patric Smith above, catching Flora Tabanelli in the Freestyle Big Air training.

According to the metadata, that shot was captured with a 1/4 sec shutter speed at f/14 and ISO200 using a Canon EOS R1 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM plus a 1.4x teleconverter.

Zoom burst

The zoom burst is a technique that uses a slow shutter speed with a zoom lens. Photographers slow down the shutter, then, while the image is being taken, zoom in or out with the lens. The result is an image that feels like a starburst of motion.

The technique works particularly well here in this shot by Matthias Hangst, as the zoom burst blurs the flights of the opening ceremony, highlighting the iconic rings at the center. Hangst captured the shot with a 1/8 sec shutter speed on the Nikon Z9 with the Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S II.

A blur filter

Blur filters use distorted glass to create the look of motion blur without requiring a slow shutter speed. That enables photographers to keep some of the image sharp while creating blur in other parts of it.

I think the blur filter works particularly well for this hockey shot by Andy Cheung. The blur creates the feeling of that rush towards the goal, yet the goal attempt is left perfectly sharp. Cheung took this shot with a quick 1/500 sec shutter speed, using the Sony A1 II and the FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM II and a blur filter.

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