The Weird Hobby — How I Used Raw IQ to Locate Exactly Where a Picture Was Taken

You don’t always need fancy gadgets or AI to track down a location. Sometimes, if you look at a photo from the right angle and with the right mindset, it’s only a matter of time before the place reveals itself.

Introduction

A few years ago, I had a weird hobby — picking a random photo from a movie, the internet, or a celebrity’s social media account and tracking down its exact location by observing the smallest details. It was a fun hobby, but one that could sometimes waste a huge amount of time for absolutely nothing.

Although it sounds odd, I believe this hobby trained me to notice things others don’t. You really need that skill to catch tiny but important details.

In this article, we’ll track down the exact location of the street lamp in the photo below.

The Challenge

This particular photo was a challenge posted on X. The goal: find the exact location — the location of the street lamp above — without using advanced tools or AI.

I’ll be honest: I did try Google Image Search, but it didn’t bring me any closer to the answer at that time.

If you have some free time, I encourage you to try locating this street lamp yourself. Leave the coordinates in the comments.
(Hint: It’s in the Netherlands.)

01. Analyzing The Photo

The first step in challenges like this is analysis — it’s like explaining every detail in the picture to yourself.

At first glance, it looks like some kind of park in a busy area. But we will have to identify every major landmark to locate it.

1. The Street Lamp

This is clearly an old-style street lamp. Judging by how it matches the environment, I concluded it wasn’t just a decorative piece — it’s probably been here for decades without being replaced.

2. Red Brick Building

Even though the image is black and white, I had a feeling that this is a red brick building with white outlines. It’s somewhat distinctive, but red brick buildings aren’t rare in the Netherlands.

3. A Church-Like Building

We can’t see the full building, as the building in front blocks most of it. But the small structure visible — with a bell-tower-like top — made me think it might be a church.

02. Street Lamps in Netherland

Since the photo is from the Netherlands, I started searching for street lamp images in there. I quickly discovered something important: the design of street lamps often varies by city in Netherland.

Weird, right? But this was valuable information — if you can find which city had lamps of this exact design, you can narrow your search area significantly.

Luckily, I found a Wikimedia page that contained almost all street lamp designs with their city names.

I wasn't concern about the fact that I had to compare all the street lamps with the photo to find the right one as this had already become an easy challenge with above treasure.

Not so fast. The lamp wasn’t there. I started doubting whether it was even in the Netherlands.

After hours of digging, I found another Wikimedia page—more than 200 lamp images this time.

Several times, I thought I had found it — especially lamps in Amsterdam and Nijmegen. The Nijmegen one looked very close.

But if you look closely, even Amsterdam’s lamps differ slightly from each other, which made me question the assumption that each city has a unique lamp design.

Eventually, I found the exact match — seventh from the last on the page. According to the description, it is in Utrecht, the fourth-largest city in the Netherlands.

Now, we know the city — but we still have to find the exact one.

03. Churches in Utrecht, Netherland

I went through many photos of Utrecht, hoping to find a recognizable building from the photo, but no luck.

So I tried the reverse approach — searching for red brick buildings in Utrecht. That wasn’t much help either; they’re common there. And I still wasn’t 100% sure it was red brick.

Next, I focused on the church-like building. A single city doesn’t usually have too many churches, so this seemed manageable.

It didn't take too long to me to find a Wikimedia page for that. It isn't big list—only 10 churches.

But I could easily find a wrong path—not one but two. I thought it's St. Peter's Church for once and St. Willibrord's Church at the other time. And wasted some time on the Google street view, trying to find a good angle of the bell tower of both churches because it is covered by other building in the street view.

Pro tip: If available, use 3D view instead of Street View for such tasks.

I’m not sure how I missed the real one on the first try. Maybe it was too obvious. The correct building was the Buurkerk which is a former church building according to the Wikipedia. It has an interesting history by the way.

04. From the Sky to the Park

The street lamp can’t be far from the Buurkerk. I opened Google Maps 3D view and started exploring the area.

Should I walk everywhere around the church to find our spot? Look at below images of the Buurkerk church and its surrounding in Google map 3d view. Do you see what I see?

We are looking for a something like a park, right? How does a park look like from the sky? What we have in our park and what we don't have?

No buildings in the middle, but some trees and surrounded by buildings. We are looking for some space which is covered by trees and surrounded by buildings.

Holy s**t! There's only one such place nearby.

It didn’t take me more than a few minutes to find the exact lamp using the Street View.

And there she is — beautiful as ever.

Final Thoughts

This article took more effort to finish than any other I’ve written, and I hope you enjoyed it. It will take a lot of feedback to inspire to write another piece like this, so your thoughts mean a great deal.

You can support my work by reacting to and commenting on this article, and by sharing it with someone who would enjoy.

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