The photographer who snapped this striking picture had no idea the jumping, screaming man in his frame was responsible for the scene of carnage in Times Square.

Only a moment later did Charles Guerin realize he had taken a breathtaking shot of the motorist at the end of his rampage.

“I thought the driver was still inside the car,” Guerin, 37, a French native who lives in Brooklyn, told The Post.

The perfectly composed image looks like a still frame from an action movie — with the just-emerged driver’s feet in mid-air, his smoking car mounted on a stanchion, a victim laid out on the ground and stunned witnesses in the background.

Guerin, a correspondent for the French agency Bestimage, just happened to be walking through the area when the driver, Richard Rojas, barreled past him in a maroon Honda.

In the time it took Guerin to pull his cameras from his backpack and rush to the crashed car, Rojas had jumped out onto the street.

“He had his hands up in his hair,” Guerin told The Post. “I just hear him screaming.”

Rojas was looking off into space, not at his crumpled car, not at the fallen victims, not at the terrified bystanders.

Guerin said he will be haunted by the moment. “I don’t know if I’m going to sleep well tonight, from what I saw,” he said.

“My camera cannot protect me.”