Doug Mills' amazing photography revisited - and an interview lie or mistake.
High speed setting, 1/8000th speed, is unusual unless you expect a flying bullet or blood spatter.
Caught in a verbal lie about the Trump bullet photo, Doug Mills, is also the photographer who was at the grade school classroom where Bush was listening to children chant about a pet goat and a plane flying into a metaphor. (Previous post)
*Addition - what is the point in wondering about the photography? It sets up a narrative, it sets us up to believe in a near miss story or in a miracle or in Illuminati Card Game predictive programming - if ‘magick’ is in play, we don’t really know who asked for the spell and what exactly it is intended to do. The lost shoe issue is symbolic imagery suggesting Trump was agreeing to fulfill a covenant to protect women and children.
Might there have been a real assassination attempt at which Doug Mills was ready to capture live gore, but which was foiled by a magickal near miss? - that was arranged a long, long, time ago? When we don’t know what we don’t know, then it doesn’t help to limit ourselves to what is known to us — because we don’t know what is unknown to us.
What is known to professional photographers is that the bullet tracing image claimed to have been taken live as Trump was being shot at, is viewed as somehow having been faked/set up/something suspicious.
Addition from a Reddit Thread about the bullet tracing photo:
“The NY Times source article is a psy-op to catch other media outlets, and it's worked too well. Just look here, in the [I'm on Reddit because I'd not "read it" thread] giving credence to the stillwater revival. The source article says the bullet streak should be 1/8 of a foot long at 1/8,000. Not the 1 foot long-ish streak as it "appears" in the "photo" he shot.
It's more like he shot his career in the foot once this gets out, unless NYT has got a patsy cline underwear package for him to model in, and his pants are as well packaged like trumps must have been. Their reputation or his. ;-)”
Upvote1, r/photography
a reply:
“he's a former fbi agent which makes it more suspect”
Doug Mills’ Bullet Photo Questions (Reddit)
Doug Mills has been a regular at the White House during many Presidential administrations and his work was considered “genius” by President Trump. See: Meet the Photographer Donald Trump Can’t Shut Up About, For all of his cries of “fake news,” the image-obsessed president has singled out veteran shooter Doug Mills for his work—and can’t keep quiet about him. By C. Cadelago, April 26, 2019 (politico.com)
Impossible photo is the summary it seems.
The bullet appearance is not realistic - a photograph from a similar class of camera with the same exposure time is here:
Similar high-speed setting was used to capture a bullet in flight photo - the tracing was a lot shorter, and there were far more misses than captures - 1 photo in 2000 tries was the average. “So, in a total of 71,922 shots I managed to capture bullets in flight in 46 frames!” (PeterRussellPhotography) *Peter Russell has verbally supported the amazing Doug Mills photo.
The math simply doesn’t add up for an AR bullet - which takes us right to the question of what type of bullet was used for those first three shots? A .308 was suggested in the audio/video analysis by Chris Martenson, PhD, as a bullet vaporized after passing by Trump, hitting a viewer in the bleachers and then hitting a metal railing of the bleachers. (I don’t know how to read this velocity chart ammunitiontogo.com/lodge/308-ballistics/)
Something is not right.
Doug Mills iconic bullet picture.
The image was shot at F/1.6 @ 1/8000 with a Sony A1 camera.
An AR-15's bullet travels at about 3,240 feet per second, or about 987.552 meters per second.
If you divide that distance into 8000, you get about 12cm, or 4.86 inches.
Either the picture was taken with different settings, or that bullet was going faster than a bullet from an AR-15. To leave a longer trail in the image, the setting would need to be half at 1/4000 of a second in order to double the trace, and even then the trace seems shorter if it was a bullet.
A piece of glass shattered from the teleprompter could actually go at a much faster speed than the bullet. The image thereby is more likely to show a piece of glass, because of size of object, speed, and color.”
~~
In an interview Doug Mills said as soon as he heard the shots, the “pops”, he held his finger down and just kept taking digital photos with his professionalcamera (that happened to be on a very high-speed setting).
The bullet is faster than sound, so it hits before we hear it.
Click for the video: (x.com/gardgoldsmith)
And another anomaly is that Doug Mills had other photos in the same series, same timeline, showing vibration of the microphone — which would only have happened on a lower speed setting. . . . Suggesting, in our photography mystery scenario, that the amazing bullet tracing photo was photoshopped from a bullet tracing he had ready from some other photo shoot. Maybe.
“Great analysis, along with Jennifer’s Substack (link below). I’ve been a pro photographer for over 20 years and I smell BS too (bullshit).
But another smoking gun is the fact that ‘motion blur’ can be seen in Doug’s subsequent frames on Trump’s microphone moving which simply would NOT happen at 1/8000th! (x.com/AdamSki500)
Crisp, high speed photo:
Video the captioned photos were taken from:
Followed by a photo with a blurry microphone. Slower speed settings will give a sense of blur to movement like the vibration of the microphone. How did he change his settings in a split second?
Stepping away from the photos to look closer at what was said in the interview by Doug Mills when being asked about the bullet tracing photo, his answer was in the order of “heard the shots, started taking photos”. That is impossible then to get a photo of the first bullet because it arrived before the sound. Either he is lying or mistaken. He would have had to already been taking the rapid repeat photos (a digital setting) in order to get the midair bullet photo.
*Reminder- it is hard to know exactly what you did in an emergency unless you have been trained and practiced at emergency response
If Doug Mills was simply confused by the emergency situation, but he had already been taking photos of Trump because it was right at the beginning of the speech, then why wouldn't he have simply reported that as the facts ~ “I was taking rapid action photos because it was the beginning of Trump's speech and I wanted a good pic before moving on to a crowd view.” . . . or why was he by the podium? Why be in a position to take photos of bullet fire when that position allegedly was to take photos of Trump? Why mention “heard the shots, started taking photos” when you were supposed to already be taking photos of the speaker . . . Not a bullet.
It is an odd interview.
The microphone vibration would suggest the high-speed camera setting was a lie and the bullet tracing photo as photoshop.
Alternate thought: If a pile-on of people had bumped into the microphone stand, then its motion might have been significant even at 1/8000th speed - but if that can still a bullet in flight, a wobbling microphone should also be in sharp definition.
Additionally my question was answered - No, a wobbly microphone would still have been caught in focus at 1/8000th, or even at 1/1000th.
In reply to a question from me, in which I linked this post:
In reply to my asking if a wobbling microphone would be blurry if it had been bumped and was moving - AdamSkit500 responded “There’s absolutely no way at [1/8000th], which bear in mind has allegedly captured a 1900mph bullet!” and continues, “I just did a real-world test photo shoot capturing flying objects from Nerf Bullets to frisbees, etc, at 50 mph or so withough any evidence of blur. Only at 1/1000 or below.” (x.com/AdamSki500)
It is suspicious settings - even in bright outdoor light.
“Also, as many other pro’s have pointed out, you wouldn’t ever run a 1/8000th shutter, not to mention the ridiculous f1.6 super shallow DOF aperture for such an important ‘live’ event, not to mention shooting MANUAL exposure too! Not unless you didn’t know what you were doing!!” (x.com/AdamSki500)
“Agree with AdamSki500 - you aren’t going to be in the press pit hiking the shutter up to 1/8000th for a close podium shot nevermind shooting at a ridiculously shallow f-stop.” - Kerry Murray Photography, (x.com/KerryPMurray)
Photo credit Doug Mills/The New York Times/Redux (cnn.com)
Disclaimer: This information is being shared for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health guidance.
https://x.com/AdamSki500/status/1816789795571425699?t=VsWPw9Dl1NSmxljJexwUEQ&s=19
https://x.com/AdamSki500/status/1816845339728494613?
https://x.com/AdamSki500/status/1816847337144131862?t=ZRMi_JWIq7JGk0Z5yEv0mg&s=19
https://x.com/gardgoldsmith/status/1816539121864835367?t=cN7ozmpl38A2PHXKqHhVHA&s=19
https://x.com/ritzjon/status/1814346142005518403?t=4osGGoBdnHynzrt5IuSxhg&s=19
https://x.com/KerryPMurray/status/1816852785201045576?t=0eDlgunN9WbV2IY5mVmskA&s=19
The best part about digital photography is that digital memory is dirt cheap by comparison with film.
JD - What kind of rabbit hole is this? A high speed one.