Audience participation post: a photo quiz. Three questions, each more fiendishly difficult than the last, regarding this image:

1. Where was this picture taken?
2. No, I mean, exactly where was this picture taken?
3. Why is the image blurred? (The correct answer to 2. provides a valuable clue!)

UPDATE. Ok, I guess that's as much participation as I'm going to get. So, it's obviously Washington, D.C., but where in Washington? Determining the compass direction of the photo becomes key. For instance: that ruddy sky – sunrise or sunset? The crescent moon provides a valuable clue - on Sept. 15th, the crescent moon was only visible in the evening hours, rising at 10:48 a.m. and setting at 8:54 p.m. Therefore it is sunset, and the picture looks south and west. Or you could look at the EXIF data on the Flickr page for when the picture was taken. (Also, the dome of the Jefferson Memorial is visible just to the left of the Washington Monument, which is to its north.) So the picture is taken from the north, and just to the east, of the Washington Monument. The large, light-rimmed expanse in the center of the image is the Ellipse, so we must be north of that, placing us just east of the White House, and obviously at some elevation – a small plane or helicopter would never be allowed so close to the White House, so we must be on a building of some sort. The White House is out, as is the neighboring Treasury building, and so that places the picture-taking point on top of the next building over, the Hotel Washington. Which just happens to have a nifty open-air terrace bar overlooking the city, and at which I had no place to sit, so I had to juggle my Sam Adams in one hand while trying to keep the camera steady with the other. I was not very successful. (The terrace is visible in this picture, right on the midline and two inches from the left edge.)

This whole pointless exercise inspired by this post.

Posted by David Fleck at 13 October 2007 11:24 AM