A personal computer issues an instruction to estimate a subject included
in an image represented by image data stored in an image server. A
database in which a place of photography, time periods, and a
photographing direction correspond to structure image data representing a
structure is stored in a storage unit of a subject estimating device in
the image server. Related structure image data related to the place of
photography and the photographing direction and a date/time of
photography, are extracted from the database by referring to the position
data and the date/time data attached to the image data. Then, a
correlation value between the extracted related structure image data and
the image data is obtained, and a structure included in an image
represented by a related structure image data with the highest
correlation value is estimated to be a subject included in the image
represented by the image data.