re: NYT Photographer Doug Mills wins Pulitzer Prize for Photo showing bullet whizzing by Trump

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The odds of capturing this shot redefines "infinitesimally", all but non existent

IOW, with an appropriate high speed camera, which this wasn't, and the camera position prepared and set, not just undone here but woefully setup, there is already virtually no chance of such a result.

In fact, I am going with - didn't happen

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See my other posts on this. I estimated (very rough numbers) that a shutter speed of 1/2,500 would capture it. That's nothing special at all.

Here's some actual facts regarding the image:
LINK .

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Mills captured the series of photos with the Sony A1, with the shot of the bullet whizzing by in the background taken at 1/8000th of a second.

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LINK

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Maximum shutter speed 1/8000 sec
Continuous drive 30.0 fps

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I'd say 1/8000 shutter speed is within my very rough estimates for bullet speed and image trail length. I'm also not sure if we are seeing the actual bullet, or some air disturbance effect (air compression might cause a vapor trail or something?). So that visible trail might not simply be the blur of the bullet itself.

At any rate, while it might be a 1 in a million shot, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Someone wins a lottery ticket with odds far worse than that.

I really, really doubt he could have faked that image w/o the Pulitzer prize board figuring out it was a fake. This photographer is well respected, he has other Pulitzer prizes going back to an image of Clinton taken in 1992. I wouldn't be surprised if he has actually taken several million images in his career. The math: over 32 years, if he was at events 100 days a year, he'd only need 313 shots per working day to hit 1 million. Especially now with digital cameras, these guys shoot,shoot, shoot. 300 images would be nothing for an event. Listen to those cameras clicking at a Presidential photo-op, it's a non-stop clatter.

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Mills worked in the Washington, D.C. office of United Press International, the Associated Press, and The New York Times.[6] Previously, he worked at a newspaper in Virginia.[7] In 1993, he won a Pulitzer Prize for photography for covering the Bill Clinton 1992 presidential campaign. He won a second Pulitzer Prize for AP's coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.[6] It has been reported that Mills was the first photographer—in 2001—to use a remote camera to photograph presidents.[7] Mills won multiple awards at the "2021 Eyes of History Still Contest" of The White House News Photographers Association. His awards included Photographer of the Year and Political Photo of the Year (for a photo of then U.S. President Donald J. Trump leaving Air Force One during a lightning storm).[8] Trump called Mills the "No. 1 photographer in the world."[7] Of the seven U.S. presidents Mills covered,...

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Being able to get 40 frames per second just means he had a 10x better chance of capturing the bullet in the frame compared to a camera that can take 10 frames per second with a 1/2500 shutter speed..

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Yea it was just a very lucky capture. There was a guy shooting pictures at the Olympics that captured a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun during competition.

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I really, really doubt he could have faked that image w/o the Pulitzer prize board figuring out it was a fake

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Didn't they give a Pulitzer for a known Russia Russia Russia! 2016 hoax though?





Not questioning Butler, just the ethics of the Pulitzer folk. (to be clear)

Nancy Pelosi full on admitted it when she explained the 'wrap up smear'.


Thanks for playing. On you go.

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It was FAR FAR less than 1 in a million.

Read several articles describing how difficult it is to capture a bullet photo - when you are trying to right next to the barrel of the gun timing off of the firing with the camera.

I still don't believe it.

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I think you're looking at it all wrong. He didn't try to capture the image, the difficulty of that has no bearing on it. He's clicking away at maybe 40 frames per second, and happened to catch it by luck. Right time, right place, doing the right thing. Even things that are 1 in 100,000,000 happen. If it was faked, someone would have exposed it.