He recently met the Oscar winner, Emmanuel “El Chivo” Lubezki, and last year Alfonso Cuarón declared himself his fan, and among his cell phone contacts he has the actor Diego Luna; He is Michelle “Mitch” Mellado, a 13-year-old boy in Mexico who only has one goal: to promote Biodiversity through photography.
On his business card, which has the logo of his company “Biofoto” on the front, it reads that he is a photographer, certified diver, and mountaineer, as well as a researcher, lecturer and scientific illustrator.
In order to fulfill these professions and all their commitments that include motivational lectures before students of Tecnológico de Monterrey and others, this young man has to fulfill his obligations that the first year of secondary demands him, “that is the agreement with the director”, said his mother and also representative, Marinka Mellado.
Mitch, as all his friends know him, began to show his interest in photography at the young age of three; his mother, single woman, lawyer and entrepreneur, had the success of encouraging the talents of her only child and at age five he had his first professional camera.
Interviewed during the fourth international BusinessKids congress for enterprising children, both said that this natural gift turned into a bomb when, at the age of nine, they learned about a children’s entrepreneurship program, where they taught them how to save, how to plan, how to make their logo, how to sell and even, to stand on a stage.
Today, four years later, Mitch is sponsored by the Japanese company Nikon, which a year ago gave him a lifetime scholarship to study photography throughout his life, anywhere in the world, in addition to providing his cameras; by Kodak, who prints the photographs he has already collected in various parts of the world.
You can see Mitch’s online portfolio here: https://mitchmellado.com/portafolio/
Also National Geographic, The North Face, the Colgate company; In total, 25 companies already sponsor young Mitch, who has also just received a grant from the Institute of Nuclear Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and is also an ambassador of the United Nations, for the objective of Sustainable Development number 15 of Agenda 20-30, which refers to the life of terrestrial ecosystems.
He stands in front of a camera or a tape recorder with confidence and seriousness, and even more than an adult, and once his commitment is over, he runs to play with his friends from the entrepreneurship program, whom he says he admires for their initiatives.
“I started since I was born, because to start is to start something and all my life I was doing something, rather I started a game in BusinessKids. Here, what makes a child entrepreneur is that he dreams and that he can always achieve what he wants, that he realizes that nobody is going to be able to ruin what he thinks,” he said.
Mitch is clear that he wants to be a professional biologist and photographer. And although he is a great admirer of Emmanuel “El Chivo” Lubezki (director of cinematographic photography) whom he met a few days ago, he said that rather than follow his idol, he wants to continue with a message of care for biodiversity.
“Taking care of the biodiversity that is the key to our life,” he reiterated. As an ambassador of the UN, Mitch already thinks about developing a documentary about biodiversity, which once concluded, he could ask for help from the winner of the Oscar of Best Director for the film “Gravity” in 2013, Alfonso Cuarón.
