Motion blur is a technique best applied sparingly, particularly in a news context. It is often the sign of a “soft” assignment, where the photographer has the luxury of enough time to experiment such as during the eliminatory rounds of a sporting event and not something you would expect to see from a breaking news story or on the trophy presentation picture unless the “bread and butter” pictures were already in the bag.

When it works, it looks great and there have been three good examples on the wire in the past 24 hours by Andreas Stapff, Carlos Barria and Bruno Domingos from the Pan American Games in Rio, all of which feature on today’s Editor’s Choice

There is a lot of it on the wire at the moment although the last time I can remember seing one in print was Mr January in the Reuters 2007 calendar - this year we will have more than enough for the other eleven months too.