Young people who are constantly obsessed with taking high-quality photos have sparked a trend of "shooting cinematic masterpieces directly with mobile phones".

It hasn't been long since the National Day holiday ended. Young people sitting at their desks but with their hearts elsewhere have already started planning their travel strategies by "piecing together holidays".

Search for "travel strategies without taking leave" on social media, and you'll discover a whole new world: on one hand, there are lists of weekend travel destinations in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou; on the other hand, there are recommendation posts for budget airline ticket blind boxes. Many people have also shared their solo trips right after work on Friday... Nowadays, traveling is no longer exclusive to long holidays. What young people yearn for is a real "escapist journey". On the surface, they're still discussing KPIs and project progress, but in fact, their hearts have flown to the other end of the city. They're daydreaming that while their colleagues are struggling to write their weekly reports on Friday, they'll have already left this city that makes people feel like overworked beasts of burden. They'll calmly post a WeChat Moment with a location far away, simply captioned with "Popped up".

And most importantly, it's about how to convey one's happiness through a carefully - planned set of nine - grid photos. For young people who are always obsessed with taking good - looking photos, traveling is like a spiritual practice. While exploring beautiful scenery and wonderful moments, they're also wracking their brains on how to post high - quality and unique photos that stand out from the sea of ordinary tourist photos.

"Stylized photo - taking" is becoming increasingly competitive

Recently, there's a newly popular topic tag on Xiaohongshu: #Aesthetic Accumulation, with a view count exceeding 10.2 billion. The content under this topic is diverse, ranging from fashion outfits, art symbols, and high - fashion photos to the appreciation of photographers' masterpieces. Young people believe in accumulating a little bit every day to cultivate their aesthetic sense, so as to shine in future travel photography.

In a wonderful trip, photography skills and aesthetic accumulation have become advanced ways to enhance the travel experience. Young people are engaging in all sorts of competitive behavior in this regard, and have even gradually developed their own system of "visual jargon".

For example, taking photos with a cinematic feel has become synonymous with "high - end aesthetics". You might see two young people near every scenic spot, one posing and the other repeatedly adjusting the angle of their phone to get the "perfect composition".

That's not enough. Travel photos should, of course, capture a sense of story and make oneself feel like the "main character".

The new generation is no longer satisfied with simply making an awkward peace sign in front of the camera, leaving only a mark of "I was here". Instead, they want to integrate themselves into the magnificent scenery and imagine what kind of connections they could have with the people, things, and events here. So, they've started to frantically collect various photography pose tutorials, asking questions like "How to take natural - looking photos without looking at the camera?", "How to interact with the environment?", and "How to create an atmospheric back - view photo?"

To enhance the sense of immersion, many people choose to rent characteristic costumes and prepare props in advance to make their poses more reasonable. According to data from Tuniu Tourism Network, 10% of female users who booked travel products in 2024 chose group - tour products with travel photography services. Travel photography during a bike ride around Erhai Lake, and experiences of wearing Hanfu or ethnic minority costumes are particularly popular.

The booming travel photography market reflects young people's emphasis on taking "stylized masterpieces" and their obsession with recording precious travel moments.

Actually, the tradition of recording trips has a long history. For our parents' generation, who rarely traveled in their lives, they would definitely bring back an album after each trip. Now, in the era of mobile imaging, the threshold for taking photos has been further lowered. The travel ritual of developing photos from the previous generation has been transferred to mobile devices. Compared with bulky professional equipment, mobile phones make creation more spontaneous. You can take them wherever you go. Mobile phones have replaced cameras as the carrier for young people's artistic expression.

More and more people are starting to study how to use a small mobile phone to take professional - looking photos. They carefully learn to capture changes in light, find tricky shooting angles, and adjust post - processing parameters. The recently launched course "8 Lessons to Shoot Cinematic Photos with iPhone" by Yingshi Jufeng, priced at 49 yuan, was quickly purchased by 250,000 people. Young people think it's worth paying this tuition to take great photos with their phones.

After all, even when using a mobile phone as a travel photography tool, young people don't want others to easily tell that it's a "mobile - phone photo". They want their casual shots to make people think that a lot of effort has been put into them. They want to use the simplest equipment to take "stylized masterpieces" and leave special memories of their trips.

Putting together a nine - grid of good photos is a challenge for young people

However, taking casual photos sounds easy, but not everyone is a photographer. For most ordinary people, the lack of basic photography knowledge can lead to many unexpected problems during a travel photo shoot.

Ruolin, a post - 95s girl, still remembers the shock she felt when she first stood by the Five - Color Pool in Jiuzhaigou. The water in the pool was really like the wallpaper on a computer screen, presenting a dreamy, gradient blue - green color, like a fairyland. Before she actually went to Jiuzhaigou, she always thought the online photos were edited with color adjustment.

She immediately picked up her phone, hoping to record the amazing work of nature in front of her. Unfortunately, no matter how she adjusted the perspective, whether it was in direct light or backlight, the pool in the photos always looked dull, as if covered with a layer of gray veil, completely failing to reproduce the shock she felt with her own eyes.

The photos never match what one sees, which is the most difficult hurdle for many people before becoming a photography master on social media. There are tens of thousands of photos stored in their phones, but the "waste - photo rate" is extremely high. Sometimes, the photos are just blurry images with a lot of noise, ruining the beautiful scenery. Sometimes, the lighting and angle are poor, making people's faces look dark, which would damage one's image if posted. Ultimately, the unclear and unsatisfactory image quality has condemned many photos to be permanently stored in the phone album, "dying" once they're about to be seen.

When trying to shoot fishing boats at the dock and the sunset, the result was disappointing

During the most atmospheric dawn and dusk hours, mobile phones often "go blind" first.

Lila, a post - 90s girl, finally got to visit the Hulunbuir Grassland during the last National Day holiday. She wanted to take beautiful photos of herself chasing the sunset and embracing freedom on the grassland. Her travel companion kept taking photos non - stop, but when it came to transferring the photos, Lila found that either the photos were backlit, making people's faces look completely black, or the sun was overexposed, turning into a small, detail - less bright spot.

Her travel companion just briefly showed her the finished photos, and she thought they were okay at that time, with appropriate composition and framing. But when she carefully opened the photos in the hotel, she found that the area around the sun was always very blurry, and people's faces were very dark. Even though her poses were perfect, there was still an inferior quality that revealed it was taken with a mobile phone. She flipped through her past photos and found that similar problems kept occurring. The sunset in Hainan Island was also poorly captured. Anxious, she posted a question on Xiaohongshu: "Does anyone else always ruin photos of the sun like me?"

Someone left a comment in the comment section: "You should first understand what the dynamic range of a camera is." This really stumped Lila. She had never heard such a professional term before. Some people also proposed quick solutions, such as how to edit the "waste photos" to save them. There were many suggestions, but after reading more than 100 comments, Lila's laziness kicked in. "It seems so troublesome. In the end, I still didn't post that photo."

The carefully - posed stylish photo shoots often lose to the chaotic lighting. When trying to record a vivid moment of jumping and waving, one might end up with a blurry, "lightning - fast five - whip" - like image. Especially after the emergence of live photos, many young people choose to keep the live format when posting photos. The problem is that live photos are even harder to handle. There are often blurry images in the frames before and after, or the final freeze - frame is not good. It's painful to post such photos, and even more painful not to post them.

Pingtan Island, but the focus failed

Young people have found that "taking good photos" has become a rather mysterious thing. Whether they can take a "life - defining photo" depends on variables such as time, location, feel, and luck. They can only leave it to fate or rely on taking a large number of photos - as long as they take enough, they hope to pick out a few decent ones. In the end, taking photos, which was originally just a small part of the trip, has become the main focus. They spend a lot of time and effort at each scenic spot to ensure a high photo - taking success rate, and the trip has become a service for taking good photos.

Some people have even resorted to an alternative way of taking photos. They've turned to "video - style photo - taking", first recording a short video and then going home to compare and screenshot frame by frame to maximize the stability of getting good photos and not waste any setup. Not to mention how inefficient this process is, just the difference in image quality between the screenshots and the original photos is enough to make people sigh. The result is that young people are caught on the scales of choice: if they want good image quality, they can't have exciting poses; if they want exciting moments, they have to sacrifice image quality.

All these pain points in photo - taking point to a core demand - young people's pursuit of certainty in "taking good photos". People aren't always on the road. For those rare trips, what they need is a device that can truly reproduce what they see and clearly record every heart - fluttering moment.

How to "solve all problems with one device" for the need of taking good photos?

Many people have tried to turn their attention to professional equipment, but unfortunately, they've found that there's a huge gap between ordinary people and professional photographers.

Fujifilm cameras were once the top choice for beginners, because it was widely said that "Fujifilm is great at taking atmospheric portrait photos". Instant cameras and CCD cameras also sold out during the retro trend. People realized that since the clarity of photos was not good enough, they might as well embrace the "distorted atmosphere" and turn the disadvantage of low clarity into an advantage. Then, action cameras like GOPRO also saw a peak in sales. People gave up on taking photos and focused on videos, planning to make vlogs the highlight of their social media posts.

However, "owning" doesn't mean "knowing how to use". The journey from being an equipment owner to a professional photographer is a long one. Firstly, people find that they have to carry a camera bag when going out and take good care of the equipment, which greatly reduces the portability. Secondly, after learning about aperture, focal length, and ISO for a long time, they find that theory and practice don't match when actually taking photos. Just because the equipment is upgraded doesn't mean "you are upgraded". Uploading photos after shooting is also a problem. When trying to post on social media, transferring files between the camera, computer, and phone takes a long time, and the transfer may even fail due to large file sizes. Moreover, cameras don't have the function of transferring live photos at all.

Most of the time, the expensive equipment worth thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan is only taken out on a whim during a few trips, and in the end, it mostly ends up gathering dust. Not to mention that many people are still on the fence and haven't really decided to buy.

After all the hassle, most young people have returned to using their mobile phones, traveling light. Moreover, they're looking for an excellent mobile phone that can serve as a qualified camera. Since they've decided to use their phone throughout the trip, they need a phone that can be a travel photography artifact.

Therefore, when choosing a new phone, imaging ability has become a key consideration. Many young people specifically look for phones with top - notch "photo - taking" capabilities. Their demand for clear image quality has never been stronger. OPPO has keenly observed this trend and focused on a "image quality revolution" in the newly launched OPPO Find X9 series, precisely targeting the core pain points in travel photography.

The details are still clear even after repeated cropping

The large - sensor in the Find X9 series supports direct shooting of 8K ultra - clear photos in the photo mode for the first time, achieving a 400% improvement in clarity. This means that whether it's the colorful texture of the Five - Color Pool or the delicate outline of a distant building, they can still be clearly seen when the photo is enlarged. The 200 - megapixel ultra - clear telephoto lens certified by Hasselblad in the series uses multi - frame fusion technology to achieve "true 200 - megapixel" image quality, making the distant scenery no longer just a blurry background.

On the basis of solving the clarity problem, the Find X9 series can further understand complex lighting environments. The Ultra - same Danxia color - restoration lens, which is standard across the series, combined with the fourth - generation color - restoration technology, can even accurately reproduce the neon lights at night in Hongyadong, Chongqing. No matter what kind of lighting conditions one is in, it can ensure a harmonious combination of people and scenery and make it easy to take atmospheric portrait photos.

In addition to static image quality, the Find X9 series has also made a breakthrough in dynamic capture. The full - blooded LYT - 828 sensor, which is custom - developed in deep cooperation with Sony,