Challenge Overview

This exercise involved analysing a short video shared by the "Visit Tirana" on X (formerly Twitter) account on 16 February 2023. The post showed a person walking through the streets of Tirana during sunset, accompanied by the caption "Sunset in Tirana".

Unlike a typical geolocation challenge, this exercise required answering two questions:

• At what time was the video most likely recorded?
• Where was the person walking when the recording took place?

Although the post already revealed the city, identifying the exact filming location and estimating the recording time still required careful observation, location verification, and temporal analysis. I tried to focus on what I could learn directly from the video itself first, before relying on any external tools or sources.

Examining the Video

Before using any external tools, I watched the entire video several times, pausing at different timestamps to gather and examine as many visual details as possible before beginning the search.

The post itself already provided a few useful clues. It was shared by the Visit Tirana account on 16 February 2023, the caption mentioned "Sunset in Tirana", and the hashtags confirmed that the location was somewhere in Tirana, Albania.

As I examined the footage, several environmental features stood out. The dedicated cycling and pedestrian lane running through the centre of the road with street lamps, surrounding buildings structures, and steady traffic all suggested that the video was filmed in a busy urban area.

I also noticed several illuminated signs along the street probably traffic lights, although most were too small or blurred to read clearly at this stage. One particularly tall reddish building stood out from the surrounding structures and immediately appeared to be a strong landmark that could later help narrow down the search area.

The leafless trees suggested that the footage was recorded during winter, which aligned with the February posting date.

These observations helped me build a visual profile of the location before moving on to search for additional leads.

Searching for Additional Leads

After documenting the visual clues from the video, I moved on to a reverse image search to see if the same footage had been shared elsewhere with additional context.

The search quickly led me to an identical video posted on the "Visit Tirana" Facebook page. Comparing both posts confirmed they featured the same footage, but the Facebook version included an important detail that wasn't available in the original X post, it mentioned "Kavaja Street" in the description. This significantly narrowed the search area from the entire city of Tirana to a specific street.

With a confirmed street name and a distinctive landmark already identified from the video, I had enough information to begin verifying the exact filming location in Google Earth Pro.

Verifying the Location

With Kavaja Street identified, I opened the area in Google Earth Pro and began searching for the distinctive reddish building that had stood out during my initial observations. Since it was the tallest and most recognisable structure visible in the video, it served as an ideal reference point for narrowing down the search.

After locating the building, I switched to Street View to compare the surroundings with the opening frames of the video. Although the closest available Street View imagery was from December 2023, it was still close enough to compare the scene with confidence.

Several visual features matched the original footage, including the surrounding buildings, the position of the street lamps, the trees, and The Smartphone Shop, which became readable in Street View despite being too blurred to identify in the original video. These consistent matches confirmed that I had located the correct section of Kavaja Street.

To determine the exact position where the person was walking, I focused on the opening moments of the video. Using the arrangement of the bushes, trees, street lamps, and the surrounding buildings as reference points, I matched the camera's viewpoint in Google Earth Pro and marked the corresponding location.

The estimated coordinates of the recording location were: 41°19'36.70"N, 19°48'25.64"E

Determining the Recording Time

With the filming location established, I moved on to the second part of the challenge, estimating when the video was recorded.

Since the video was posted on 16 February 2023 and clearly captured during sunset, I used SunCalc to analyse the sun's position for the identified location. After placing a marker at the verified coordinates and setting the date, SunCalc showed that sunset in Tirana occurred at approximately 5:15 PM.

To validate this, I also searched for the official sunset time in Tirana on the same date using an independent online source - timeanddate.com. The reported sunset time matched the result from SunCalc.

However, the footage showed that the sun had not yet fully set. The sky was still illuminated, and the sun appeared to be just above the horizon, indicating that the recording took place shortly before sunset rather than at the exact sunset time.

Based on the sun's position shown in SunCalc and the lighting conditions visible in the video, I estimated that the recording was made between 4:45 PM and 5:15 PM.

Final Answer

Estimated recording time: Between 4:45 PM and 5:15 PM (16 February 2023)

Estimated recording location: 41°19'36.70"N, 19°48'25.64"E

Tools Used

• Google Reverse Image Search
• Google Earth Pro
• SunCalc
• timeanddate.com

Closing Thoughts

This exercise also reinforced the value of examining a video thoroughly before turning to external tools. Watching the footage multiple times and pausing at different timestamps helped me identify several visual clues that later proved useful during verification, making the investigation more efficient and confidence in the final result stronger.