Reference bullet photograph fabricated
Photographer deceived the public on evidence of the "assassination attempt"
An important dimension of to the claim that an assassination attempt took place at the campaign rally of Donald Trump on July 13 is the photograph purportedly of a bullet in flight. The photograph was taken with an exposure time of 1/8000 seconds on a Sony a1 camera. The photograph showed the candidate against a background of a clear blue sky with a faint thin streak next to his head. The New York Times discussed the photograph in an article entitled: “Photo Appears to Capture Path of Bullet Used in Assassination Attempt”. The article headline is supported by an interview with a retired FBI agent, Michael Harrigan who stated: “Given the circumstances, if that’s not showing the bullet’s path through the air, I don’t know what else it would be”.
Another important reference regarding the feasibility of the bullet photograph is a set of photographs obtained with a similar camera by a photographer associated with the British military - Peter Russell. Russell made the following statement to me in an email1:
So in conclusion, yes the image of the ’Trump Bullet’ shows every indication of being genuine.
Russell also shared an archive of photographs of bullets in flight that included one photograph taken at an exposure time of 1/8000 seconds. That photograph, shown in the above figure, is clearly fabricated for the following reasons:
The aspect ratio of a bullet in a photograph should be closely related to the exposure time. Shorter exposure times should allow for less blurring in the horizontal direction and thus the bullet should appear to be shorter relative to its width. The 1/8000 second exposure photograph is clearly anomalous in that respect.
At the exposure time of 1/8000 seconds for a bullet traveling approximately 3100 feet/second, the leading and trailing edges of the bullet are expected to be blurred by approximately 4 inches. In the 1/8000 second exposure photograph, there is almost no observable blurring of the leading and trailing edges of the bullet.
The axis of the bullet is misaligned with its path.
The contrast between the bullet and the background is expected to decrease as the exposure time increases. Yet in the 1/8000 second exposure photograph, the bullet contrast is higher than in any of the other photographs.
I asked Russell if he could explain why the bullet in the 1/8000 second exposure photograph appears so thick. In a separate email I asked him for comments and corrections on a draft of this article. He responded in an email.2 He states, in part:
All the photographs that I sent you were taken by me, over the period of two days and all are exactly as photographed.
Despite his denial, it is clear to me that Russell fabricated the reference photograph of the bullet in flight and that that fabrication has led to the false impression of the appearance of bullets in such high-speed photography.
Dear Peter,
Many thanks for your email concerning the feasibility of catch bullets in flight. I don’t know if you got my details from my web site, but if not this is the method that I employ: https://www.peterrussellphotography.com/nk1/nk12.html
I’ve seen the YouTube interview with Doug Mills, the photographer who captured the ’Trump Bullet’, and the metadata settings embedded in his file, and 1/8000th of a sec exposure is entirely consistent with the length of the 5.56mm bullet streak seen in the photo, based on my experiments.
Is you will note from my ‘How to Do It’, even when you can see the shooter’s trigger finger the odds of actually capturing a bullet travelling at +/- 950ms are still heavily stacked against the photographer, so for him to catch the bullet - which I assume cannot have been the first in the burst as some warning must have initiated his shooting sequence - was incredibly lucky. What’s more if I was taking photos in the same scenario, 1/8000th sec at 120 frames per second are not the settings that I would have chosen - unless I expected something untoward might happen! Perhaps he was alerted by the shouts from the crowd that someone with a rifle had been spotted.
So in conclusion, yes the image of the ’Trump Bullet’ shows every indication of being genuine. The photographer was vastly experienced and was there, ready and primed and more importantly just started taking pictures when everyone else was ducking into cover - the mark of a professional. Catching THE bullet was the 1:1,000,000 chance and it paid off handsomely!
I’ve never see this before, because until the Nikon Z9 and then the Sony that he was using appeared there wasn’t the technology available outside a lab to allow this to be done!
I hope this has helped you form your own conclusions.
Best wishes,
Peter Russell
Dear Peter,
I’m curious to know why you appear to think that there are any more inconsistencies in the Trump bullet shots and mine?
Remember that firstly, the photos I sent you were NOT "obtained" by me as you suggest, BUT taken by me under relatively controlled conditions where the rounds had reached their maximum velocity - thereafter slowing down fairly rapidly,
Secondly the bullets in my photos are only a maximum of seven metres from the muzzle, whereas Trump was reportedly 150ish metres from the shooter - by that distance the velocity of the rounds would have decreased, although without testing it’s impossible to say by how much.
The propellant charge in Trump’s shooter’s rounds is also an unknown factor.
All the photographs that I sent you were taken by me, over the period of two days and all are exactly as photographed. Nikon UK can be contacted if you wish to ‘authenticate’ them.
None of them are ‘fabricated’ as you appear to suggest! Who has got the time or the energy, or indeed the need (under normal circumstances) to bother to fabricate 50 or so images out of 70,000 taken - which was also some two years PRIOR to Trump’s shooting?
There will always be inconsistencies in photographs of rapidly moving objects, due to, amongst other things, heat, humidity, elevation, reflected heat, propellant charge, bullet weight, distance from rifle muzzle and so on.
I think that you are attempting to make a mountain out of a molehill, but if that’s what you wish to do, go on - fill your boots!
On 27 Aug 2024, at 14:46:33, Peter Yim <yimpjp@gmail.com> wrote:
Mr. Russell -
I did a side by side comparison of the bullet photographs - see figure in this article.
The bullet has a very different appearance in the photograph taken at 1/8000 seconds exposure. In that photograph the bullet appears thicker. Did you take that photograph and can you account for that difference?
Peter Yim
Best wishes,
Peter Russell