iPhone 17, AI, Radiant: the (newsletter) Year in Review

A lot has changed!

This amazing artwork was created by Google’s Nano Banana in about 20 seconds. I asked it to make a cartoon of people with iPhones taking photos of jumping dolphins in the Pacific Coast Highway and to have a calendar visible.

This year saw some 137 newsletter posts over mostly 52 weekends, a mix of photo meets tech meets travel pieces. Thank you all for taking the time to read, watch and listen! I love this community.

In 2025 the newsletter had even more to write about than ever.

• New phones are being sold now based on their innovations in cameras and computational photography.

• New technology—namely A.I., started as a time-saver to help you with tasks, but by the end of the year, they were getting in on the imaging act too, offering simple text based tools to edit photos and create graphics.

• And we’re all using our phone cameras on our travels and many of us are leaving the big cameras at home.

  

It’s been a busy year! The latest iPhone was released in September, and excuse me for saying this, but I wouldn’t want to use any other model than the 17 Pro, and yeah, it’s the best iPhone Apple has ever produced. We say this every year, but for me, because the new Selfie camera now has a wider, higher resolution point of view, it’s essential for the type of work I do: making travel videos, generally by myself. (Yeah, but I did crack the screen into smithereens when I dropped it big time by the Rocky steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)

At the beginning of the year, it looked like Openai’s ChatGPT has cleaned Google’s clock with superior AI tools. I had switched it to pretty much all the way from Google searches, to find simple answers, without having to wade through Google’s links to bad websites and non-stop advertising.

By the end of the year, many users had switched to Google’s Gemini AI, saying it was superior and more relevant. Additionally, Google added the Nano Banana photo creation and editing tools, which are fantastic, (look above!) and have a come-on free offering, but if you use it more than a few times, you’ll have to pay. I’m now forking over $20 a month for Google services, which include Drive, Photos, a heftier Gmail storage limit and Nano Banana, vs. $10 monthly at the beginning of the year.

ChatGPT says its photo creation and editing tools are being enhanced, and I’d rather put my money on this company. I don’t trust Google, which introduces products, changes its mind, discontinues them (Google Home hasn’t seen love in years) or jacks up the pricing.

The biggest negative about all the AI enhancements for photo and video: we have an even harder time figuring out what’s real and not, especially, in those short form videos, thanks to new creation tools from Google and ChatGPT.

I watched a video on Instagram the other day of people dragging a live polar bear out of the mouth of a whale, and spent way too much time trying to figure it out.

The companies sometimes put labeling on their creations to let you know where they came from, but not everybody does. I can only imagine what the Instagram feed will look like a year from now. Not good.

The most popular posts here dealt with tips on how to take and edit better photos with your phones.

Speaking of tips: if you’re not using the anti-AI photo editing app Radiant Imaging, you’re missing out on my favorite enhancer for photos. Richard Harrington, one of the founders of the app, wrote on his blog that he doesn’t want to create something that not’s there, but instead to just work with the pixels and make them better.

With Radiant, you get a one-click improvement to your pix.

“Generative AI has a place—like restoring old family photos (where image quality may be really low) or creating artwork that's not meant to be documentary—but in photography, we owe our subjects and our viewers honesty.” Harrington wrote.

The app is free, with add-ons that can you pay for. I use it on desktop and mobile.

Dad, Brother, the Trailer Park and the Movies

You know what else I wrote about here this year? I expanded beyond the photo meets tech meets travel format with a handful of personal stories and reflections, which you responded to in a big way. Thank you for that. If you missed them, I’ve got the links all cued up for you.

• The movie that changed my life. Totally.

• My brother, the Music Man. Say hi to Jez Graham.

• Travels with Dad. Producing a travel show in 2025, some 35 years after Jerry Graham did it for local TV in the 1990s.

• Our First Home. Recollections of living in a trailer park that went up in smoke in January.

• The First Road Trip. What led to On the Road Again.

  

A winner!

Carlos Mendez will be staying overnight soon in beautiful La Jolla, California. He’s the latest winner to our Photowalks Giveaway, in partnership with the fine folks at Kamla Hotels, which has three properties in the La Jolla area, which is near San Diego.

We recently also had a promotion with Kamla’s hotel in Pismo Beach, California, and gave away a beautiful suitcase from Lieber’s Luggage of Albuquerque, and several backpacks from Nomatic.

Stay tuned for details about the next Giveaway!

The 44 Episode Photowalks marathon continues!

Scripps News is airing 44 episodes of my travel series Photowalks between Christmas and New Year’s in a multi-episode marathon that began on Yuletide Day. (For context, I’ve delivered 60 half-hour Photowalks episodes since the run began on Scripps in October, 2024.)

The marathon continues with four episodes on Sunday beginning at 10 a.m. ET with Part 4 of the Pacific Coast Highway road trip series, with more episodes in the late evening on Monday, and then we get to New Year’s Eve.

Ring in 2026 with me beginning at midnight ET (or better yet, 9 p.m. PT for the countdown) with six episodes, starting with the Los Angeles show. Then pick it back up a few hours later at 9 a.m. ET with eight more.

Remember that you can watch Scripps News wherever you get your streaming, as well as on dedicated Scripps channels on Peacock, Pluto, Tubi and Amazon Prime and it’s also built-into smart TVs from Samsung, LG, TCL and Vizio.

Auld Lang Syne

That’s a wrap! I’ll be back at you tomorrow with a look back at the 30 locations Photowalks visited in 2025. See you then!

Jeff