Slow News Month

Not much happening in the news lately.

Oh yeah, the attempt on the life of Donald Trump, almost forgot about that one.

So what did I learn from that?

Well first of all it's been a good opportunity to think about a few things regarding one of the great passions of my life, photography. 

You may have had the chance to see the amazing photograph of the exPOTUS shortly before he was grazed by a bullet, with the track of another bullet whizzing by him to his left (our right). We know this isn't the bullet about to hit him because the shooter was to his right (our left), meaning the bullet in the photograph had already passed him. In the amount of time it took to make the exposure, what we call the shutter speed, the bullet travelled a bit of a distance, meaning that it was not frozen still in the photograph, but rather was recorded as a blur, from its location at the beginning of the exposure, to its location at the end, and all points in between.

From looking at the photograph, I'd estimate the bullet covered about two feet during the exposure. Given that, one could presumably estimate the rate of speed per second of the bullet by multiplying those two feet, by the denominator (the bottom number) of the exposure time which is measured in fractions of a second. 

According to the photographer, Doug Mills of the New York Times, the photograph was shot at 1/8000 of a second. So multiplying two feet by 8000 gives us a velocity of 16,000 feet per second, about three miles. 

I wasn't up on the subject of bullet speeds before seeing the photograph, but that seemed way too fast. I looked it up and indeed it is. A bullet from the type of weapon used in the assassination attempt typically travels in the vicinity of 3,200 feet per second. 

So what gives, altered photograph? fake news? conspiracy?

Actually, there is quite a logical explanation for the distance bullet covered to appear greater in the photograph than it actually was. It has to do with the type of shutter on the camera that Mills used. The shutter is the part of a camera that opens up to allow light coming from the lens to fall upon the light sensitive material, be it film or in Mills' case, a digital sensor., that records the image  The shutters found on most modern cameras are known as focal plane shutters. Unlike leaf shutters which open from the center, focal plane shutters open from the side. They consist of two curtains, a leading curtain that opens up a window between the lens and the light sensitive material to make the exposure, and a trailing curtain traveling in the same direction that closes to end the exposure. After the picture is taken, the shutter has to be "cocked" to return the two curtains back to their original location before the exposure was made, so the process can be repeated. 

With slower shutter speeds, usually below 1/200 of a second, there is a gap of time when the entire "window" is open and the whole digital sensor (or piece of film) is exposed to light. Above those speeds however, the trailing curtain begins to end the exposure before the leading curtain is completely open, meaning there is never a time when the entire image is exposed at once. The faster the exposure, the smaller the gap of time there is between the opening of the leading curtain and the closing of the trailing curtain. 

By the time you get to 1/8000 of a second, the fastest exposure you'll generally find. the gap between the two curtains is very small, meaning only a very small slit of the image is exposed at any given time during the exposure.

Now the amount of time it takes for the two curtains to make their complete journey is usually quick enough to stop most motion like race cars, but not bullets*. Assuming the speed of the bullet was around 3,200 fps, in 1/8000 sec, the bullet would travel approximately 3 inches. Which means that if the shutter were moving in the opposite direction as the bullet (imagine yourself in a moving car observing another car traveling in the opposite direction) , there would have been a very small window of time for the bullet to reveal itself in front of the camera during the exposure and the resulting image would have seemingly compressed the trail of the bullet to less than the actual 3" covered by the bullet in 1/8000 second. Conversely, if the bullet and the shutter are traveling in the same direction (now imagine observing a car moving the same direction as your car but at a different speed), as appears to be the case here, there is more time than 1/8000 sec to track the bullet's trajectory. Therefore, we have the appearance of more distance covered during the exposure. 

Moral of the story, photographs lie, or at the very least, mislead.

I already knew that part.

Something I also already knew about photography is this: a well-made still photograph is vastly superior at capturing an important moment than a comparably well-made a moving image. I understood this long before I was able to express it, back when I was a child looking at the great weekly magazines of my childhood such as Life and Time. 

Think of the iconic photograph of the late Wille Mays with his back to home plate catching a fly ball off the bat of Vik Wirtz in the 1954 World Series. In that photograph, we can contemplate everything from the ball about to be caught, to the position Mays is in relation to where the ball is coming from, to the reaction of the fans in the stands, many of whose vision of the play was blocked by the peculiar architecture of the old Polo Grounds. The moving image of that catch is remarkable as well in its own right but as it exists in little over the blink of an eye, it mainly serves to help put the still image, forever frozen in time in our memory, into context. 

The same is true for the most memorable photograph of the Trump assassination attempt, one of several of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist to the crowd after members of the Sevret Service helped him back onto his feet, after literally pushing him out of his shoes to get him out of the line of fire. 

The one that stands out of all of them was made by AP photographer Evan Vucci. 

Here's a link to the AP page that features the photograph along with the story.

Dare I say, this is about as close to perfection as a press photograph can come. it is a shoe-in for a Pulitzer Prize.

Its composition is somewhat reminiscent of one of the most famous press photographs ever made, the Joe Rosenthal photograph of the raising of the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. 

Here is an interesting video that gives a little background of that photograph. So you can compare the difference between still and moving images of the same event, the video includes a short film of the flag raising made by a Marine Corps photographer standing beside Rosenthal. The video also refutes the common misconception that the photograph was staged.  

Like Rosenthal's photograph, the American flag is prominently featured in Vucci's picture, flapping in the breeze at the top of the frame. But in Vucci's image, the flag is mere window dressing as Trump himself replaces Old Glory as the object to which all the action is centered upon. In his photograph, four Seret Service agents, three men and one woman are caught in the middle of propping the bloodied Trump up, each one well defined in a distinct pose as they attempt to shield the former president from exposure to any other would-be assassins. If that weren't enough, they were also struggling with Trump in the attempt to haul him off the stage, while he defiantly pumped his fist to the crown admonishing them to "fight."

The photograph became an instant icon, expect to see it again and again through November as team Trump will use it to promote their man's alleged courage in the face of death.

Regardless of your opinion of Donald Trump, I haven't been afraid to share mine, you can't deny the man has more than his share of chutzpah, having the presence of mind to pump his fist to the crowd after being shot, while an average Joe like me would have crawled away to safety like a snake in the grass.

Or maybe it was just too perfect?  

I have to admit having been a little skeptical as I followed the event in real time on the radio while driving home from grocery shopping that Saturday afternoon. My first thoughts after hearing that he pumped his fist at the crowd after being shot was that this was all a setup. I later discounted my own little conspiracy theory after I learned that other people at the event actually did get shot, one of whom died.  

But not everybody gave up their theories.

The funny thing about conspiracy theories is they always portray the narrative of the people who promote them. In this case, I didn't hear any Democrats claim that Joe Biden tried to have Trump assassinated and I didn't hear any Republicans claim it was all a setup by Trump and his minions.

Just for fun playing the devil's advocate, if we could for a moment put the moral implications aside, let's examine the likelihood of a conspiracy, shall we? First of all, assuming this was a conspiracy put in motion by one of the political parties, who would have had the greater motivation to carry out an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Democrats or the Republicans? 

Well, it seems to me the Democrats had everything to lose and absolutely nothing to gain by snuffing out Trump. As we have witnessed again and again, adversity that befalls the exPOTUS, including the myriad of impeachments, indictments and felony convictions against him, only works in his favor. After the failed assassination attempt, Trump was greeted at the RNC in Milwaukee, just days after the shooting, with religious fervor as many claimed him to have been personally saved by God himself. Using that logic, apparently God didn't care about the retired fireman who was killed by the would-be assassin's bullet, not to mention the children killed in the school attack in Uvalde, TX, or the thousands of people who die from senseless violence every day in this country. 

If the shooting were not bad enough for the Democrats, had Trump been seriously injured or killed, it would have been worse, as his status as a martyr figure among the faithful would have been unstoppable. Heck, even a dead Trump might have won the November election against an increasingly frail Joe Biden.

Fortunately, that didn't happen, and Trump had his moment of glory in Milwaukee as God's chosen one.

So, as the assassination attempt clearly worked in Trump's favor, it's obvious the Republicans had far greater motivation to carry it out than the Democrats. 

But did they? 

Of course not. 

Let's just use some common sense.

It was a real shooter using real bullets who really killed and maimed people. The shooter was a 20-year-old who didn't make his high school shooting club because of his bad aim. And he was using a weapon more suited for taking out a nest of enemy combatants or a classroom of third graders than for picking off a target one and a half football fields away.

I don't know about you but if I were going to sign off on a fake assassination attempt against myself and have someone shoot in my direction, this wouldn't be the guy I'd pick to carry it out.

I think what impressed me the most about this whole unfortunate event, is how vulnerable we all are to conspiracy theories. "How could this happen?" was the question I heard most in the media, social and otherwise, and in real life. 

My answer to that question is "how could this not have happened sooner?" In my 65 years on this planet, I've witnessed countless acts of violence carried out in this country, starting with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The names of the assassins of the sixties are forever etched into the memories of anyone who lived through those particularly violent years. Many of us however have forgotten the would-be political assassins who were less competent in carrying out the task at hand.

But I haven't. These are names I didn't have to look up: Arthur Bremer, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, Sara Jane Moore and John Hinkley Jr. all of whom attempted to kill either presidents or presidential candidates in the seventies and eighties.

I don't remember the names of other would-be assassins such as the ones who more recently tried to kill Congress members Gabby Giffords and Steve Scalise, but political violence is no stranger to this country, nor has it ever been.

I suppose we haven't witnessed close encounters with assassination attempts on presidents in the last several decades simply because Secret Service protection has been beefed up significantly, which made the attempt on the life of Trump lead to more questions about who was involved. 

But seriously folks, the Secret Service participating in a conspiracy to kill a presidential candidate? I simply don't buy it.

Let's face it, even at the highest level mistakes happen and given the political climate in this country at the moment, it should come as no surprise at all that someone would seize on the opportunity to take out a former, current or possibly future president.

If we're willing to accept that people are willing on their own to commit heinous and senseless crimes like massacring children as they attend school, why should it be so hard to understand someone on their own attempting to kill a politician? 

This unfortunately is nothing new, we live in a violent world and a violent country.

Anyway, despite the terrible tragedy that fell upon Corey Comperatore and his family, I'm happy Donald Trump lived to see another day.

Other than that, not much happened this month.

Oh wait...

*The well known photographs made by Dr. Harold Edgerton and others that capture bullets in mid flight were made possible not through the use of fast shutters, but strobe light, the duration of which can be much shorter than 1/8000 of a second.