Travel: PhotowalksTV Best of 2022

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In the year We traveled to many amazing places in 2022 for Photowalks TV, my streaming travel photography series on YouTube, Tubi and Roku channels. Photo moments, of course, stand out, but so do some of the nicest people I’ve met along the way.

One of the joys of traveling and making videos is meeting amazing people, and I want to focus on a few for the end of the year highlight show. Two of them are here in the South Bay, both in Hermosa Beach.

We caught up with Nicolas Gauthier in Paris for Photowalks TV.

Nico Gauthier is the country manager of social magazine app Flipboard. When we met him in Paris, he told me about a fabled smartphone app that “has been made a billion times and seen trying to take a picture of the Eiffel Tower.”

In Bandon, Oregon, an out-of-the-way but oh-so-magical place in southern Oregon, photographer Susan Dimmock told me I needed more than a camera by my side to capture rock formations. “Don’t forget the boots.” If you take photos in Bandon, you should be wet.

In Pismo Beach, people stand in line for hours to get their first crack at the Old West Cinnamon Rolls shop on Dolliver Street. I wanted a little more–I wanted to see how these beauties were created. The owner, Cindy Parkhurst, told me that if I came back at 6 o’clock the next morning I could film. She said, “Have you seen our sunset?” she asked me. And he breathed. Yes, they are very special. Sometimes more than the South Bay.

Out in San Francisco Bay, Mike McCue invited me on a “Photosail” to shoot the Golden Gate Bridge from another angle – the boat! He was right, it was unusual. I tried to fly my drone from there but it couldn’t fly as fast as the boat was going. In fact, he was lost at sea. Mike turned the boat around, caught it in the air, and handed it back to his owner.

Von Cannon and his periwinkle shells by Sam Graham for the easy reader

Then there were two more memorable works for the easy reader.

Publisher Kevin Cody asked me to look at Von Cannon’s seashell collection of Hermosa Beach, and after we met, I named it The Seashell Millionaire. He has millions in a small house. We hope to turn it into a museum one day!

It has traditional shells, periwinkles, sand dollars and moonstones, sea glass and tiles, even dead starfish. That is absolutely not the case. It’s a lost beach finder. He collected what was left and took it home for viewing. That includes odd slips, cigarette lighters, broken sunglasses, phones, GoPro cameras, iPhones and other things thrown in the sand.

“I just love the ocean,” he says. “It’s therapy for me.”

And for the third year in a row, I did a video segment with Surfing Santa. This year was very special, as we saw local chiropractor Derek Levy transform himself into a surfer and hit the water, which was great fun.