Ever pored over scene photos trying to ID a pedestrian’s shoes, a rider’s helmet, an action camera, or a distant surveillance camera?

I’ll often frustrate myself in such situations until I remember Google’s Image Search. At one point last year Sam prodded me to use the tool with a photograph that contained very few pixels of the item of interest, and to my surprise Google quickly identified the item (a Dynojet Power Vision in that case, which can log data BTW).

Since then, I’ve pushed it into more challenging situations than I would have before, and it continues to impress. If you haven’t used it yet, give it a whack: can you ID the helmet model in the image below? Here’s how the process works:

  1. Right click to download the photo

  2. Crop the image to include only the helmet

  3. Navigate to Google Image Search​

  4. Click the little camera icon in the right portion of the search bar

  5. Drag the image in, or click upload a file to browse for the file

 
 

That should quickly reveal the helmet as a Shoei RF-1200, which is my kicking-around-town helmet. If you’ve used the tool before, hopefully this was a quick reminder of its existence and power. For whatever reason, it’s one I tend to overlook, but it usually proves its worth.

Thanks for reading, keep exploring!

Lou Peck
​Lightpoint | Axiom

P.S. When I see a fellow recon at the salvage yard, but a couple loaders are blocking our union.