Geolocate images by shadow, architecture and terrain

◆ Methods · Block 1: Geolocation and Chronolocation

Geolocation SunCalc · Google Earth Foundational

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes you have completed Course Zero:

Introduction

Introduction and context

1.1 The investigative need

.Every still that lands in your inbox without metadata is an unverified claim. The caption says one place. The pixels may say another. Visual geolocation is how you close that gap. It is the discipline of taking a single image, working only from what is inside the frame, and producing a coordinate or a coordinate range you can defend.

This matters for public interest reporting because the most consequential footage is rarely tagged. A leaked clip, an anonymous upload, a still pulled from a deleted account, a frame from a video that has been re-encoded so many times the EXIF is long gone. If you cannot establish where, you cannot establish what. Place is the first link in the chain that connects an image to an event, an event to a perpetrator, and a perpetrator to a record.

The technique works because the world leaves signatures on images. The sun casts shadows whose direction depends on latitude, longitude, date and time. Buildings follow regional patterns of materials and form. Roads carry country-specific paint and signage. Power lines, drainage gulleys, kerbstones, electrical sockets in the background of a domestic scene: each one narr

1.2 Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes

After completing this tutorial, you will be able to:

Calculate latitude bands from sun-shadow direction and length using SunCalc.
Identify region-specific architectural and infrastructural fingerprints in a still image.
Triangulate a candidate coordinate using terrain features and Google Earth Pro historical imagery.
Document a geolocation chain that another investigator can replicate from your notes.
Distinguish a verified geolocation from a probable one using the confidence-level taxonomy.

1.3 Threat model

Threat model

This tutorial defends against three specific threats:

False captioning, where an image is repurposed from a different time and place to support a current claim.
Source obfuscation, where the original location is stripped from metadata to prevent attribution.
Reliance on a single channel, where one social-media account becomes the only basis for a place claim.

It partially defends against: deliberate scene staging in a real but unrelated location.

It does not defend against: high-quality synthetic imagery, image regeneration by diffusion models, or composite forgeries that combine real backgrounds with fabricated foregrounds. If your threat model includes any of those, this technique is necessary but not sufficient.

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Pinpointing location through visual clues: shadows, architecture and terrain