[Ray76]

I looked up the angle of the sun for NYC on 9/11/2016 at 11:30AM and then plotted it on a map.

Sun rays will intersect 26^th St. at an angle of roughly 30°.

And they do.

I then looked up the angle of the sun for 9:30AM, the azimuth is 115°, which is almost directly down 26^th St.

I think there's no need to worry about the time the photo was taken.

(What a way to kill a morning, time for coffee!)

[little jeremiah]

Can you be specific for someone who doesn’t understand technical terms? Either the photo was earlier morning before the event as FN posits, or after 90 minutes at the apt after she “recuperated”. IN which case it would be at least 3:30 or 4, since they would have had to drive her there, unload, recuperate for 90 minutes, and then exit the apt.

[William Tell]

"I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou." [Fargo fans will get it.]

You can't lay a protractor on a photo in order to measure an angle unless the angle lies in a plane perpendicular to the direction the camera is pointing.

I estimate the angle you are measuring to be closer to 75 degrees than 30. An accurate assessment would require information about the angle of the camera. For example, imagine that the camera was lowered toward the sidewalk. One would observe through the viewfinder (and on a photo) that the apparent angle would decrease toward zero until it becomes impossible to see both the shadow and the sidewalk edge.