How to change the key photo on the Places Album in iOS17 or later

When we look at the list of the albums on our iPhone, sometimes the key photo used as the thumbnail is the most annoying photo that we do not want to have to look at, whenever we are browsing the albums. For a standard album the first photo in the album will be used as the key photo, so it is easy to change the key photo, we just have to drag a photo we like more to the the beginning of the album. That is more difficult for the albums that are created for us automatically by Photos.

We can do two things to avoid photos we do not like to be presented as the key photo for an album:

• Either hide the photo we do not want to see at all,
• or create another photo that will meet the rules for the key photo.

To change the key photo for the Places album:

On my iPhone I am seeing usually one of the most recents photos as the key photo of the Places album. The "curating" seems to pick a most recent photo with human interest, just now it picked one of the test photos where I took a selfie to test the front camera, and this photo I did not want there at all in the pride of place. After I have hidden this photo, it vanished from key position of the Places album, but has been replaced by another photo showing a face that I did not want to see there either.

To be able to make a specific photo the key photo, I duplicates a photo I liked more and advanced the year in the capture date of the duplicate by a thousand years. Now this photo is the most recent photo with some human interest and the key photo of Places, and I hope it will stay this way. I don't mind a smiling elephant as the key photo.