Shortly after I spotted some deer on a little ridge immediately in front of me, they started to run toward the treeline. Without thinking about my camera settings, I pressed the shutter button, hoping to capture the action. If I had been paying more attention, I would have realized that a shutter speed of 1/100th of a second would not freeze the motion, especially when shooting at the far end of my 70-300mm lens.
When I reviewed my images on my computer, it was pretty obvious what had happened without even looking at the EXIF data. Many of the shots were blurry, but I really liked this image. Instinctively I had panned as I had tracked the deer, blurring the background, and I managed to capture the deer with its hind legs in the air. In many ways, this slightly out of focus shot captures a sense of motion even better than if I had been able to freeze the action by using a higher shutter speed.
I try to be conscious about the settings on my camera at any given moment, but I am happy in this case that my inattention caused the wrong settings to be just right.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
One of the many ways, and certainly not the worst, to show movement.
I sometimes intentionally choose to pan to show motion. In this case, I happened to luck out, because I really didn’t intend to produce this effect. A always, luck seems to play a big role in a surprisingly large number of my wildlife shots.
If you have see how they make sure photos of cars wheels look like they are turning in a pan shot, you can understand why a larger blur may be be just the ticket in some cases for realism.
When I see deer they’re usually moving, so a photo showing that makes sense to me.
Have you been drinking again, Mike? 😉
You hit the speed setting.
We learn the most from what we thought were our mistakes.
Shots don’t always have to be crisp and perfect to capture the moment