Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

What Mary Moorman told me is that she heard a shot just as she was taking her picture, and then she heard two more. 

So, it was one shot, one sound as the camera was up to her face and she was shooting, and then 2 more that happened after that, when she was done with the picture, bam, bam.

So, she took her picture not at the time of the fatal head shot, which was the final shot, but rather, at the time of an earlier shot.

And, it makes sense that she would have because from the moment we see her in the Zapruder film, which is Z-292, she has her camera trained on the Kennedys. 

She may have had her camera trained on them before that; we just don't know because it is the first frame in which she is seen. When she's out of the picture, who knows what she was doing; she could have been doing anything.

But remember, she was using a still camera. Not a movie camera, but a still camera. And when you're using a still camera, you don't track people with it; you don't swing around with them, the way you might with a movie camera. Once you get the camera up and you get a fix on them, you hit that shutter. And that's because the longer you wait, the more nervous you get, and you start shaking, which is no good. Any movement at all on your part is going to result in blur. And in this case, there was a strong incentive to snap the picture BEFORE the Kennedys reached her, and that's because it's the only way she could capture their faces. If she waited until they reached her, she would hardly see JFK at all; Jackie would be blocking her view.

For instance at Z-300, she's capturing the back of Jackie and hardly any of JFK. And after that, it gets worse, where all Mary can get is the back of their heads. So, why would she wait?

But, what I want you to do is recall pictures that you have taken under similar circumstances in your life. Maybe you were at a parade once, where you took a picture of your daughter marching in the parade. What did you do? How did you go about it? You know that to take a clear picture, you have to fix yourself into a solid stance where everything is still except your shutter finger. The photographer has got to freeze, right?  So, you're looking at her with your naked eye just above the raised camera; then you shift your eye to the viewfinder. And when you find her in the viewfinder, you snap right away. But, if she's not centered correctly, you jump ahead a little bit. Then you fix yourself; you freeze. You wait for her to reach you, and then you hit the shutter. But, you don't track her in a continuous rotary motion and then hit the shutter. It's not a movie camera. You know that you have to be still when you take it. If you are not perfectly still, there is going to be blur. 

So, the very idea that Mary Moorman was rotated right in Z-292 and had her camera trained on the Kennedys, and then she rotated with them from right rotation to neutral and then to left rotation- a very wide arc- and then finally she hit the shutter is ridiculous because NOBODY WOULD DO THAT. Not with a still camera. Maybe with a movie camera, but not a still camera.  And in this case, her best shot was the early shot which captured their faces. The idea that she would have waited until after the fatal head shot to take her picture is preposterous. Plus, she told us that she did no such thing.