How to win #whereisitwednesday -AKA- How to cyber-stalk and earn SBD doing it

After another successful round of #whereisitwednesday I think it is time that I share some of the "magic" I use to win this game.

In case you are unfamiliar with #whereisitwednesday: It is a @photogames game that happens on Wednesdays (not every Wednesday though), where you have to figure out (or guess) the location of the photo posted by one of the photostars. They try their best to have a challenging photo. It's up to you to prove them it wasn't challenging enough (Or maybe I see that as my personal goal?).

I will start with an overall approach and will do some quick dives into a couple of examples. Hoping to show you that you can solve a lot of these challenges. In case you are not the lucky one recognising the spot from your own memory, it all comes down to a combination of tools, tricks, psychology and perseverance.

Where I use "he" you can also read "she".

^Source

Let's start with some basic steps to get you warmed up

There are a few easy things that you can (and should) do to benefit from possible mistakes the photostar made.

1. Just look at the photo! I'm not calling any names (cough) but sometimes a street sign just didn't get enough blur. You might think that this is super obvious, but most of the players seemed to miss that tiny but crucial detail.

2. Reverse Image Search: These guys are proud of their photos (and they should!) and take photography seriously. So chances are that it is a repost of an earlier posted photo. There are multiple tools available that you can use to check if a photo is already online somewhere else, like https://www.tineye.com/.
   I mostly use Google: https://images.google.com/ (click the camera in the search bar) because it also looks for visually similar photos (Did it's magic in this case). https://www.bing.com/images/ does the same, but I don't have much experience with that one.

3. Check Steemit timeline and Social media accounts. Like I said, reposts do occur! Reverse Image Search doesn't index the photos on social media (most of the time). And Instagram filters also don't work in image search's favour. So try to find their social media accounts and scan the photos that they posted. If they don't already share their other accounts on Steemit, Google their nickname & name to find Instagram, 500px, Facebook, personal websites, Google+, Flickr, Twitter pages. There is a chance (compare @bil.prag's challenge to his Flickr) that you will find an (almost) exact match on one of these pages (this might change after they read this post)!

All we need to do now is cross our fingers there is location information included when you find a match. I was once super happy to have found an exact match on a social media page but still wasn't able to pinpoint the photo because it was in a random folder.

The serious work

So, in 50% of the cases, you don't even have to get to this point. Here the more challenging #whereisitwednesday photos end up. Now we get to the real OSINT sleuthing!

I like to approach this from 2 directions: the things I know and the things I search. Going back and forth between these two will guarantee the quickest result. You just have to be specific with your searches to not end up searching the entire world. You can only do that if you know enough.

Figure out what you DO know (Knowns)

• READ... Go back to the challenge and read the text that goes with it. Are there clues in there that you should take seriously? Are there comments that give away just a little too much?
• LOOK... The first time you looked was a way to scan for mistakes that were made. Now you need to look for clues in the picture. Are there pieces of texts visible that give away a language? What unique identifiers can you find in the photo? What are the things you will be looking for while searching?
• LEARN... About the photostar. Where has he been in the past? In what area does he live? Who does he travel with (so these Social Media accounts might come in handy too).

The idea is that you end up with a list of keywords that might help you build the right search query.

Searching based on the clues you found

• Personal pages:
  Again? Yes! This is probably the fastest way to pinpoint the location of that shot. Of course, you can Google all the piers in the world but from looking at the photo we could tell this probably wasn't in Canada. Also, @derekkind's personal pages give away he doesn't travel much outside of Canada/USA. Taking this into account I assumed that photos from this area will probably stand out in his account. Now go search for something that looks/feels the same!
  Go back to the photo and create a mental image of it. The water looks pretty blue... Scanning his Instagram leaves us with the top right photo of very blue water and the #bermuda tag. Adding the words "pier" and "bermuda" to the photo in reverse image search and we suddenly have a hit!

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• Search images in Google:
  If reverse image search doesn't give you an image that looks the same, start adding words and be as specific as possible (like we did with the pier).
  This also worked in this challenge by @snooway. I had no clue about the location and hadn't yet found anything on her own page. The image on the photo was pretty clear though. How often will you find bushes trimmed in the shape of a head?
  I wanted to figure out the exact terminology for these trimmed bushes: "topiary". Google Image Search didn't give me a hit at first. When I added "topiary"... still nothing. After adding "face" I got a hit. The first three image results are of the same thing. The pages told me the exact location and I won the challenge.

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• Common knowledge about the area: Let me explain that with this example:
  @jarvie wants to know where the horses roam. On his personal domain we find the same photo with the tag #nevada attached to it. The same photo is on his Instagram but without further clues. Two photos earlier he shared that the location is "Nevada State Route 140" (BINGO!). But according to Google Maps, that route is pretty long! I used Google to find out where you can normally find wild horses on Route 140. Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge is the first hit. This was my answer.

• Google Maps:
  Try to be as specific as possible. Google Maps and Streetview will help you with that. You can use it to find the exact spot, but also for exploring (next example). Also, make sure to check out uploaded photos in the same area by other photographers. This is especially useful if locations aren't next to a road but in the mountains, for instance.

So what about the "Intuition"?
It isn't always straightforward. @caseygrimley had one of the hardest challenges ever (only because I somehow missed this photo). He shared crucial information:

"I've been there before once or twice, in fact it was here where I first fell in love with the night sky when I was just a young lad laying on the beach watching shooting stars."

My intuition told me it was probably a spot his family had a vacation home. Or maybe still have. So I decided to go look for family photos near water, possibly on a camping site.

On his Google+ page I found the following post about his dad finally joining a Milky Way night with him. It was at Bear Lake and I somehow felt this could be the right spot. If it is that hard to convince your dad to join, you probably do that close to a familiar place and not drag him miles away from his bed (This is where the "psychology" comes in handy).

In Google Maps I searched for "Bear Lake" and Camp Ground and found a spot where I started. I soon figured out that the shape of the mountains in the distance looked similar and drove around Streetview a little more. Eventually I found a spot pretty close to the actual location. But I wouldn't have found that without me looking for a photo with his family.

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Extra tips

• Sometimes exif-information of photos contains important clues (like GPS). They made sure to remove it from the #whereisitwednesday photo, but the originally posted similar photo might still have that information. (Also very handy for #whenisitwednesday)
• Clues and answers are everywhere. Check the name of the folder a photo was posted in. Check the tags used for Instagram. Check out the date (which you can use on other sites to further specify your search). Maybe, if you click "buy", extra information shows up!
• Google Maps: check-check-double-check in Google Maps. Use Streetview to see if you get the same picture. Then you can be sure you are right!

If all fails

Social engineering: Establish unsuspicious human interaction with the photostar and try tricking him into giving just a little too much information. Make it about something seemingly unrelated. I tried using this trick for #whenisitwednesday when @derekkind posted a photo of a lunar eclipse and I needed to know how far in the past I had to go looking. So I asked him how long he had been a photographer... His answer took too long. I lost that game... (also because I was impatient and didn't follow my own rules)

This is over the top, I know! You can also just put in a random location or make an educated guess. But I am here to explain to you how to WIN #whereisitwednesday. And I noticed that people are becoming rather good at this game. So gear up and happy sleuthing!!

This was all I could think about teaching you. With this manual, you are now ready to OWN this game. And I must have forgotten or am unaware of some tricks. I am super curious what your tricks are.

Please tell me: How do you play #whereisitwednesday ?