Towards An Understanding Of Smartphone Photography’s Meaning Production In Tourism Experience

When mass tourism emerged,personal photography was born,photography and tourism as a pair of inseparable topics have received extensive attention,based on the previous research and looking at the present,social and cultural changes and the development of science and technology have given photography and tourism a whole new meaning,for photography,smartphone photography has become an important milestone in the history of photography,and the rise of individualism and consumerism has also led to more emphasis on the tourist experience.From the technical perspective and the tourist’s perspective,the tourist’s shooting practice should be re-examined,and the relationship between smartphone photography and the tourist experience deserves further exploration.Through interviews,the findings of this paper are divided into two main parts:the first part analyzes how smartphone photography has influenced tourists’ tourism experience from a technological perspective.Smartphone photography has achieved the combination of three important elements of image capture,processing and distribution for the first time,and as a technological breakthrough,smartphone photography has reshaped and recreated the role played by photography in tourism experience in the traditional sense.In the second part,from the tourist’s perspective,this study argues that smartphone photography,as the embodiment of technological progress,both shapes and is shaped by the tourist’s understanding.On the one hand,smartphone photography act as an enabler,enhancer and disrupter of the tourist experience,while on the other hand,smartphone photography further amplifies the connection between tourism photography,which is oriented to both tourists and tourist places,and tourists can use smartphone photography as an important tool to mediate the interaction between tourists and tourist places and thus coordinate their own tourism experiences.In the perspective of this study,smartphone photography and tourists,as the two ends of the meaning production of tourism experience,are always in a negotiation process during the trip,and in the negotiation process of meaning production,the relationship between smartphone photography and tourism experience will gradually move towards a more benign interaction;of course,the meaning production of tourism experience is the result of the combination of internal individual will and external environmental factors,and in this dimension,the natural imaging drive of mobile photography and the drive of sharing and beautification brought by the visual digital economy have made the media logic transcend individual will and become the guiding force in the production of meaning of tourism experience,which also makes tourism experience more mediated and programmed,losing its uniqueness and authenticity.