By David Stenhouse, Data Mutz

Take a look at the above photo. Where was the photograph taken? When was it taken? And what details exist to help you determine those items?

When we take photos and post them to the web for others to see, we are posting much more. What is in the background is just as important as the focal point when considering giving away much more information than desired. Teaching ourselves to watch what additional information we are providing the world is a lifelong task because technology keeps gleaning further data from our activities each day. What used to be a printed photo that you could bend and rip is now a pile of data that gives away date, time, location, and camera settings (this to be discussed in a later post). In this photo, however, let us just examine the scenery.

Enlarging portions of the photo help a great deal finding the location. The bus gives it all away:

The bus is a member of the King County Metro system. I’m not sure how many King Counties exist within the borders of the U.S., but the logo gives away the county in question:

Performing a quick search on Google will confirm this logo belongs to King County in Washington State. Reviewing a map of King County will reveal that only two cities are large enough to match the building sizes seen in the photo: Seattle and Bellevue.

Now, look at the photo more closely by enlarging the street sign snippet:

Is that a “3” or “33”?. Using Google Maps to search Bellevue via satellite photos shows that where the larger structures exist, there is no “3” or “3x” Street that is two-way and supporting bus traffic:

Bellevue Washington downtown satellite view

To speed this up a bit, Google Maps Street View is wonderful at quickly locating points of interest at ground level. Looking at Seattle’s map, we see that one-way streets exist on 2nd, 4th, and 5th Avenues, however, 3rd Avenue is a two-way street. Using Street View, you can just start from the south end of the city skyline and click on the street arrow to travel northward. You’ll eventually come to Columbia Street, which is where the building types are very similar.

And here is the Columbia Street intersection:

There exist more details that support this location, such as the "Do Not Enter” sign on the post just above the bus in the original photo. Seattle shuts down 3rd Avenue at certain times of the day to only bus traffic.

So when was this photograph taken? The exact date is not for sure, however, a few more details do exist to help determine a time of year:

Seattle actually can have beautiful warm weather, but it generally won’t show up before early Summer and will fade away once again mid-Fall. With the trees sporting the full greenery and the pedestrians’ attire, this looks to be a mid-summer day. Shorts, short sleeves, and flip-flops.

The background of photos or video can reveal much more information than the photographer probably desired, especially in a public setting. High-res photos with laptops open in the background may just give away email messages and the to/from and subject lines. Selfies may inadvertently reveal notes or photos on a kitchen refrigerator—items that can be read with the high-quality photos our devices are now capturing.

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