José María Mellado wrote the photography books of a generation, and now he has switched to mobile: “He does not come to compete, but to give us more freedom”

José María Mellado then had a huge task in front of him, that of selecting some 400 photographs for his next exhibition, Closer. He opened a huge folder with all the images mixed together, viewed them, and began sifting through his own work, one of the most arduous and demanding tasks for almost any artist. Once chosen, he sent the snapshots to the curator of the exhibition, Pablo Juliá, also a photographer and former director of the Andalusian Center of Photography (CAF), who, in turn, chose the ones he found most interesting. Between them, two made with the mobile.

The event was fortuitous, explains Mellado, since he had taken those photographs with the phone to have references to the place and the framing of the snapshots that he would later capture with his reflex camera and, without really knowing how, they ended up in the folder together with all of them. the others. A coincidence that soon took on the tints of an epiphany: the images on his phone were of sufficient quality to have been screened by two long-standing professional photographers. Something was changing, and he was ready to explore it.

“For me it was a challenge. If he tried and found that it did not give, then it was thrown away, but what if it gave? At that moment I realized that the mobile could be used as a tool and I started to investigate how I could get the most out of it, until now”Explains the photographer from Almería, who since then has made the most of the use of the telephone for his work like few professionals in the discipline, to such an extent that he has become one of the greatest exponents of the use of this device to capture the world in snapshots.

For some, that use of the mobile for professional photography was a surprise, because there are photographers who consider that you can only get a quality snapshot with a camera, and more coming from someone like Mellado, author of several books on techniques and methods for obtaining high-quality photographs.

“It was the same with digital, everyone said At first, it was not going to come close to analog, which was worth nothing, but it turns out that it was. I am already doing very serious things with my mobile. I have been to Namibia recently and I have quite a few good photos taken with the phone, images that I could never have gotten without it because I didn’t have the camera at hand, or because the mobile just gives you the freshness of a quick imprint, ”he says.

And to demonstrate all the photographic game that can be taken from the mobile, Mellado, that consider smartphones as a gift for photographers, you haven’t just used your phone for work, too has dedicated two books from his high-quality photography series to this device, which published in March 2021: ‘High-quality mobile photography for Android’ Y ‘High-quality photography for iPhone’. “It is a very serious tool,” he highlights.

A complementary tool

Serious, yes, but not unique, and it is that it defends the telephone as another tool for the photographer, which does not replace any other, rather it complements them: “The mobile phone does not compete with the camera, but rather to give photographers greater freedom”.

For Mellado, the smartphone is occupying its own space in the photograph, that of the moment or the scene that appears for just a few seconds before the photographer’s eyes, or when he is very far from his camera, perhaps when leaving the cinema, or returning from the gym, maybe in the middle of a party with friends, who knows. Because there are photos that are pure serendipity and woe to you if you don’t have a camera nearby! Before, many of those unique snapshots were irretrievably lost, but today, thanks to that perpetual tenant of our pockets, they stay with us forever.

“The mobile allows you to take photos that you would never have taken because you did not have a camera at hand, because now we carry the smartphone with us everywhere. But it is true that it is not valid for everything, that is, It is not a substitute for the camera, because there are things that you can only do with a camera. With your mobile you have a fixed aperture, and the software does it very well, but, for example, taking a portrait will never be the same as a camera with an 85mm f / 1.2 lens, let’s be clear. They just complement each other, ”he says.

Photography for beginners

Asked about other advantages beyond the versatility and speed of the mobile, Mellado points out that it also allows to overcome an important obstacle for those who are starting in the photography discipline: the high cost of the equipment. Smartphones, without being, in general, cheap – and even less those with a good camera – allow those who are attracted to photography to approach it more easily.

“I already know several cases of people who have started taking photos with their mobile phones and then have bought their camera. If you are interested in taking cool photos beyond the selfie, in improving, the phone can help you to educate the eye and take a liking to photography. And you can stay there or continue exploring with a camera, “he says.

Likewise, he considers that it is very positive that millions of photographs are taken every day thanks to mobile phones, although his opinion about the platforms on which they are shared is another story. And it is that Mellado have a love-hate relationship with social media, which he considers to be a good means of disseminating his work, but he reproaches them for discouraging creativity – “filters are a machine for taking identical photos” – for destroying his images with the compression they make of the archive – “they force you to eliminate subtleties ”- or force you to change the format.

“Something that It annoys me a lot about the networks, for example on Instagram, is that it does not support a 2: 3 vertical photo, which is the usual format of any camera, which forces you to cut it. In horizontal, on the other hand, it does leave you. Why is this happening? Simply because they consider that a vertical image in 2: 3 looks ugly when scrolling, ”he says.

Despite this, he admits that, today, the best social network to disseminate the work of a photographer is precisely Instagram: “Flickr is already used by very few people, and Facebook is also in the doldrums. At the end we must assume that the most interesting is Instagram, it is a reality, for that reason, although despite, it is necessary to accept and assume some of the inconveniences that it has ”.

Tips for photographing with your mobile

For anyone who wants to use their mobile as a photographic tool, whether they are a professional or a beginner, Mellado has a basic tip to get started: always capture images in RAW format. This type of file does not compress the photograph like JPG does and allows all the information of the shot to be stored, ensuring higher quality and preventing the snapshot from getting worse in possible subsequent editions.

“RAW on mobiles had a fundamental problem, space, but not anymore, because now they have much more capacity and there are free ways to directly store photos in the cloud. There is no excuse not to use RAW, also the JPG of mobile phones is very aggressive, with compression and high contrasts to make it look beautiful on mobile, but if you want to edit or expand it you are annoyed. I always shoot RAW”, He says.

Regarding the type of mobile, explain that any recent high-end models is a good tool for photography. “I have been more iPhone, but lately I have verified that brands like Samsung, Huawei or Xiaomi are also very good. Any of these high-end terminals allows you to carry a very serious tool in your pocket ”, he assures.

Regarding the processing of the images, he explains that doing it on the mobile itself or transferring the files to the computer is a very personal option, and both are perfectly valid, because today there are quite good applications to edit photos on the phone, like Lightroom or Snapseed. He himself, admits, has used these apps to modify the image directly and publish it on social networks, although he points out that If you are going to use the snapshot in an exhibition, you prefer to transfer it to the PC, because for advanced touch-ups the mobile is more limited.

Technical quality or strength of the take?

Mellado makes a defense of the mobile from the technical excellence of photography. For him, the phone can also achieve high-quality images, sharp, clean and with precise exposure. But, Do technical aspects matter so much when we have a single shot before us? Isn’t the versatility and speed the greatest virtue of this device for taking photos? Aren’t some of the best snapshots ever shaken or noisy?

“When I talk about quality in photography in my books, I mean someone who pursues an excellent shot from a technical point of view, but that quality does not have to be in all photos, far from it. Sometimes the interest of a photo is not that quality, but what you have captured or the atmosphere it conveys. And everything goes there: noise, jitter, blur … Because at the end of the day it is about transmitting an emotion. But that does not mean that you know how to do it well. You learn how to get the most out of your camera or phone and, from there, use it when it suits you. But don’t take a photo out of focus or noise because you don’t know how to do it differently ”, he explains.

In fact, although José María Mellado is one of the great references of high-quality photography, one of the aspects for which many of his images also stand out is by the force of the moment, by the opportunity of the taking, either because they immortalize singular, spontaneous or agreed scenes -as in his famous photo of the couple dancing in Havana at sunset-, or because they capture unique atmospheres.

Another key point of his work as a photographer is editing, digital development, with which the Almerian He finishes endowing his images with the drama that characterizes his style, particularly in landscapes.

“For a photograph to excite and attract you, you need to master the technique, so that the final photo conveys what it has to convey. But I also consider that a good capture and a good development is essential. The development does not have to be aggressive or much less, sometimes it only has to be a small adjustment of temperature or balance of lights, and in some cases it requires, depending on the style of each one, a treatment in Photoshop, or not ”, explains the photographer.

“In my case”, he continues, “my style is known because it is based on a certain drama in the images, and that drama is accentuated by the choice of light. In the studio this is done with the composition of the light, outdoors I do it with the choice of the moment. A low, oblique light interests me much more than an overhead light. And then, obviously, that you have to adjust already in the treatment of the photo. But it’s the same as I did in the lab, It is part of the personal language that each photographer has, of their style, which gives the image something unique”.

Image 1 | Fernando Sanchez