Well, the person who posted this nice-sounding comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30402432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30402432 has an email

Well, the person who posted this nice-sounding comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30402432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30402432 has an email in their profile. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Worth giving a go at least... My anecdotal experience (just poking around) is that Google never deletes publicly-facing data, because it's cheaper to just keep it. So there may be a reasonable chance the photos are tucked away somewhere, along with the metadata pointing them to the account in question.