I started the Shaded Seats project back in 2019 with a single MLB ballpark. Since then, I’ve grown it to well over a hundred stadiums across the world. People sometimes ask how I can possibly know so much about so many venues. The answer is that I rely on a lot of tools to identify shade. OpenStreetMap is my go-to source for determining the exact compass orientation of stadiums. Time and Date is a great website for information about sunrise, sunset, and solar noon. SunCalc shows me the two-dimensional path of the sun throughout the day. And, of course, there are photos.
I’ve studied thousands of stadium photos over the past several years. I look at photos on Google, stock photo websites, Instagram, and elsewhere. I watch for sun and shade patterns during live sports broadcasts. I will take photos of my TV when I watch games and want to remember shade patterns. Having a visual representation of where shade lands is an incredibly powerful tool, but photos can lead you astray if you’re not careful.
Take a look at this photo of Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois. As of today, it’s the main image on the stadium’s Wikipedia article. It clearly shows shaded seats on the left and sunny seats on the right. If you used this photo to choose shaded seats, you’d likely end up in the exact opposite spot of where you actually wanted.
The key piece of information you need when studying stadium photos is when the photo was taken, both the date and the time of day. If the metadata on Wikipedia is accurate, this photo of Memorial Stadium was taken around 8:30 AM in mid-August.
Solar noon in Champaign, Illinois, in mid-August is a few minutes before 1:00 PM. That means a photo taken first thing in the morning will show a reversed shade pattern compared to what you’d see during an afternoon game. I covered this phenomenon in my post about navigating morning games.
There are clues you can use to estimate when a photo was taken. For example, if the photo is from a specific game, you can usually search ESPN historic game data or check the team’s schedule archive to find out what time that game was played. Sometimes, however, there’s no easy way to know.
Many ticketing websites now include “view from this seat” photos or 3d renderings to help fans see what their view of the field will look like. These are great for understanding sightlines, but frustrating when it comes to figuring out shade. These photos almost never indicate when they were taken. Many are shot in the morning golden hour, likely because that’s when the venue is empty and has soft photogenic lighting.
Photos can be incredibly useful in identifying shady spots, but they’re just one of many tools you need for the job. Most importantly: if you can’t tell when a photo was taken, don’t put all your trust in it!