Before I take any picture I always ask myself: "Is there movement in scene?" If the answer is "no" then I really do not care too much about my shutter speed (I always use a tripod so sloooooow shutter speeds are not a problem and fast shutter speeds work just fine as well). Now we do need to be carefull to answer "no" to quickly because wind can cause leaves and flowers to blow around. Without paying close attention you may not notice the subtle movement. If the answer is "yes" then we need to ask another question: "Do I want to show the movement (by blurring it) or do I want to freeze it?" We blur moving objects by using a slow shutter speed and we freeze movement with fast shutter speeds.

          Please consider the image below. Look at movement and think about the shutter speed in use:

If there is wind then we need to consider any movement caused in the foreground vegetation. In the case of this landscape image I want the foreground to be sharp. So if there was wind I will use a fast enough shutter speed to free the motion. Then we also need to consider the clouds in the background. Are they moving and if so how fast are they moving? Typically, their movement is not going to be much of a problem because they are far away. The distance of objects from the camera impacts how obvious movement is in the images. The closer objects are the stiller they need to be to be sharp.

          Lastly, the waves are moving. So I ask myself: "Do I want to show their movement or not?" I decided that I wanted to show the movement to draw more attention to the small waterfall. I needed something strong on the left to balance with the strong bright sky on the right. Since there was not much wind I chose a slow shutter speed. I waited for the wave to start pulling back and then took the image.

          Now if there was wind I would have taken two images, one with a fast shutter speed to freeze the foilage in the foreground and one to show the motion of the wave. It is really easy to blend the two exposures together with an image like this because no foilage is in front of the moving wave. The next time you are out to shoot, think about movement and shutter speeds. Why not show some movement more often? Everthing does not always need to be sharp.