Casual Phone Photography Journey with Huawei Mate 20 X (2019–2024)

From 2019 until 2024, most of my photos were taken casually with a Huawei Mate 20 X. Back then, I wasn’t “into” photography in any serious way. I barely knew how to compose, had little to no clue about color theory, and mostly relied on instinct and whatever I think looked nice on the screen. Learning happened slowly and informally, mainly by scrolling through photos on the internet and subconsciously copying what felt right. Over time, that casual habit turned into genuine interest, and I began to feel that I was slowly outgrowing the phone. Not because it was bad, but because the look it produced no longer matched what I had in mind—especially when compared to photos taken with dedicated cameras. That’s when I started paying more attention to editing, first using the phone’s built-in tools, then gradually moving to Lightroom, where I realized that post-processing wasn’t about fixing bad photos, but about translating what I saw and felt into an image that finally made sense to me.