Sofia Santos’s OSINT Exercise #010

Hello again! If you have been following along you know that we have been hitting hard at geolocation lately. We’ve had to use various techniques and methodologies that enhance our understanding of location-based data.

Mrs. OSINT provided some nice geolocation challenges for us to solve, each one pushing our analytical skills and encouraging us to think critically about the information we encounter. However, now it’s time to tackle our tenth OSINT exercise from Gralhix’s blog. This challenge is not very long but highlights the importance of verifying the accuracy of your findings.

Exercise #10

Tasks:

1. Which event is being celebrated in the photos? 
2. Which two photos were taken by the same person?
3. The two photos mentioned above were taken in the same city. The photographer was previously in a different city. Find out the name of that city.

During this exercise, I immediately started looking for the original post, thinking this would take me to the photographer. I was able to find the post shown in the pictures, but not the original post or the photographer using this method. It took me some time to realize I needed to approach this differently.

I read the post again and “Zangbeto dolls” caught my attention. I searched for what celebration uses these dolls and found that Zangbeto originated in Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Further down in the post, it was explained that every year on January 10th, the Vodun Festival is celebrated in Benin. This was most likely the location for this exercise.

To me, the left and top right pictures seemed like they would be a little more difficult to find when compared to the crisp image quality of the bottom right, so I used this image to do a reverse image search.

Once I changed my approach, I started getting more leads. As you can see from the screenshot above, I immediately found multiple matches with the reverse image search. I opened up the post from The Guardian to test my luck.

Here I found the photographer’s name—Dan Kitwood. It also mentions Getty Images, so… you guessed it! We are searching for him in Getty Images as well.

To my surprise, Dan Kitwood took both the left and bottom right pictures during the 2012 Voodoo celebrations at Ouidah, Benin. Something about the top right picture made me think it was taken by the same photographer. Maybe the colors, but that is why we always double-check our results even if they seem to be correct.

Looking further back in the pictures, I also found that Dan was in Cotonou, Benin.

Tasks:

1. Which event is being celebrated in the photos? 
   • Vodun Festival.
2. Which two photos were taken by the same person?
   • Left and bottom right.
3. The two photos mentioned above were taken in the same city. The photographer was previously in a different city. Find out the name of that city.
   • The two pictures were taken in OUIDAH, BENIN. The photographer was previously in COTONOU, BENIN.

Today I had the opportunity to experience finding the photographer information thanks to a different post. This unexpected discovery enabled me to delve deeper into the source image, which is rich with detailed information such as the location, the precise date it was taken, and even a short description of what is captured within the image.

Feel free to leave a comment below. I hope you enjoyed reading today’s blog and hope to see you next time!

Resources

• https://gralhix.com/list-of-osint-exercises/osint-exercise-010/
• https://www.thecollector.com/zangbeto-voodoo-dance/
• https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2012/jun/15/benin-voodoo-festival-in-pictures
• https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/image?phrase=dan%20kitwood%20vodun&sort=mostpopular&license=rf%2Crm