The story behind Trump’s viral photos after assassination attempt

It started like any other campaign rally–like one that photographer Evan Vucci had covered hundreds of times for the Associated Press.

Former President Donald Trump took the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, greeted his supporters and began his speech.

Then, in the blink of an eye, chaos ensued.

“Over my left shoulder, I heard some pops and immediately knew they were gunshots,” Vucci said of the assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday (13). “At that moment, I pointed my lens at the stage and saw the Secret Service agents coming in and covering up (Trump). From then on, I got into work mode.”

While many at the rally sought to hide, Vucci and other photojournalists sprang into action.

“It’s all instinct at this point,” commented Vucci, AP’s chief photographer in Washington. “You don’t think about anything other than ‘I have to take this photograph.’ It’s the curse of photographers: I can’t go back and recreate that. I have to get it right now.”

Vucci was in the security area in front of the stage when the shots rang out. His first thought was not his own safety, but rather documenting the moment happening in front of him. There are no second chances to capture the story through a camera lens.

“I was trying to find the best angle to see the president,” he recalled. “And then I started thinking, ‘Okay, how is he going to get out of here? Where will they take him? What are they going to do?’ He finally got up, and I knew they were going to get him out on the other side of the stage, so I ran to the other side of the stage.”

Vucci photographed Secret Service agents helping Trump and taking him to safety.

“As he stood up, he looked at the crowd and raised his fist,” Vucci said. “In my visor, I could see the blood on the side of his face. And I think this is the moment that a lot of people are sharing.”

Doug Mills has covered presidents for more than 40 years. The New York Times photographer had never experienced anything like the events of Saturday (13).

“It was so fast and chaotic and scary as hell,” he said.

Before filming, Mills moved around the stage, getting different angles of Trump before settling just below the podium and looking up. Then, he heard the gunshots and believed it could be a motorcycle or perhaps a tractor.

It was from this vantage point that Mills would take one of the most famous photos of the shooting. It just took him a while to realize this.

After Trump was taken to a safe location, Mills was examining the photos and sending them to Times editors.

He knew his photos documented the moment Trump was hit by a bullet — it was easy to see, in a series of images, Trump grimacing and then touching his right ear. But editor Jennifer Mosbrucker informed him that he had detected something else.

“Jen called me five minutes later and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this,’” Mills shared. “I thought I had (messed up) everything. That was my first thought. And she said, ‘There’s a real picture of a bullet behind his head.’ I thought, ‘What?’ And she continued: ‘You had such a fast shutter speed that you captured it’.”

She told Mills that an FBI ballistics expert looked at the photo and called it “one in a million.”

Anna Moneymaker, a photographer for Getty Images, was with Vucci and Mills and at first thought the shots were fireworks.

“But then when the crowd started screaming and some officers started telling us to get down with a look of shock and confusion on their faces, I just thought it was surreal,” she said.

Moneymaker’s breathing became heavy and her head began to spin, but she kept her finger on the shutter and managed to take a photo that became one of the most memorable of the day.

“I moved on stage and saw all these agents on top of (Trump) — and then I saw his face through the agents’ legs,” she commented. “I didn’t know how badly he had been hit, so I just wanted to see him and take pictures to see his condition. I saw blood running down his face. I took some overexposed shots before I got the settings right, and then the agents started lifting him off the ground as soon as the shooting stopped.”

Mills, Moneymaker and Vucci talked about how important it was to stay focused on work amidst the madness.

Vucci covered Iraq and Afghanistan early in his career and has been in combat situations before. He said his experience helped him stay calm while everything was going on. He, like his colleagues, focused on the basics.

“I was looking through the viewfinder and thinking, ‘Okay, what’s my light? Where is the composition?’. I was telling myself, ‘Slow down, slow down, frame, compose’ – all the things photographers tell themselves,” he shared. “It’s very important in that moment to not just push the button and hope you get something. You have to keep taking photos. You’re not taking photos. You are making them”, he pointed out.

When Trump was shot, Moneymaker remembers swearing under his breath and saying “my God, my God.” But she didn’t freeze.

“I really just wanted to document the story and have a photo,” she said. “I was a little nervous. Like, what am I going to have to show for this? So I kept clicking the shutter. In between swearing, I just said, ‘Keep taking pictures.’”

Mills tried to remember what he learned from Ron Edmonds, a former Associated Press colleague who photographed the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981. “I always talked to him about what the setting was when he photographed Reagan being shot, not flinching and not looking away; just staying focused on what was in front of you,” Mills said.

With just a few hours of sleep on Sunday (14), he took a moment to reflect on what he had experienced at Butler.

“It was horrible. In retrospect, it was very scary – I probably didn’t make the wisest decision for my safety. But I was doing my job,” he highlighted.

This was a sentiment echoed by his fellow photographers.

“I’m happy that everything was in focus and I did the work I was supposed to do,” concluded Vucci.

This content was originally created in English.

original version