geolocate-from-pixelslisted

# Geolocate from pixels Every photograph taken outdoors contains enough information to place it. The constraint is never the image; it is your patience and your reference knowledge. The beginner mistake is searching before inventorying. People see a mountain, type "mountain with two peaks" into a search box, and get nothing. The method is the opposite: extract every clue first, rank them by how much of the planet each one eliminates, and only then start searching — because the clue that pins the country is usually not the one your eye went to. ## Rank your clues before you search Work down this list. Each row eliminates far more of the world than the one below it, so a single row-one clue is worth twenty row-six clues. | Tier | Clue | What it buys you | |---|---|---| | 1 | Readable proper nouns — business names, street names, municipal logos, school names | Often an instant pin. A business name plus a country is a map query, not an investigation. | | 1 | Phone numbers on signage and vehicles | Country and frequently city, from prefix and digit-grouping convention. | | 1 | Language *and script*, then orthography | Script narrows to a family; specific diacritics, letter forms and spelling conventions narrow to one country and sometimes one region. | | 2 | Licence plate format — shape, colour, band, character layout | Country, often issuing region. Visible from a long way off, survives compression. | | 2 | Driving side | Splits the world roughly a third to two thirds. Read