I love my job because sometime is in movement. I love it when I have pressure on my shoulders and I need to think, react and shoot as quickly as I can, and sometimes also quicker than I could! I love the feeling when I enter in a meeting room or in an office for a portrait: I start looking around, studying the environment and the lights, the posters on the wall and the best background. I need a lot of elements in a photo which can help me in telling that story. I love looking for the unusual spot, the correct position to have the best angle, different from all the others. I slowly choose the aperture I need for the best depth of field and the shutter speed for the best contrast of light, and then I sit and wait. I am waiting and listening to what the Big of the world and of Europe are saying, I wait until is the moment to act: the smile of Tymoshenko or the open arms of Prince Charles, a gesture of Pöttering pointing up or the eyes of Prodi and Barroso crossing each other and then, only in that moment, I start pressing the “click”… sometimes only once, sometimes five times in a row.

Maybe I forgot to introduce myself: I am the Photo Editor and Photographer of the European Parliament website, and, as you may have already understood, I love my job when is pure action, and I hate it when is still as a glass of not sparkling water.

One of the last adventures that made me smile was the making of the portrait of Alanis Morissette. A real Rock Star was in the EP, and a proper Hollywood shooting was, at the very last moment, prepared for me and some other video-journalists. But the manager started pointing down some rules: “Photographer has to wait until she feels ok; the photographer can enter after all the cameramen, because she does not want to be shot when she is giving a video ITW, etc…”

Anyway, as you have already understood, what I wanted to be on my film was exactly what she didn’t want to give me: a natural photo, a natural smile. So, I entered the empty room and set the camera, I chose where I wanted her to be and waited nearly an hour to have my photo shooting. Here she was, smiling and beautiful, once again with the manager and…”click”! “Please can you wait a little bit more, we need to finish the make-up”, the manager said. “Yes, I am sorry, I was only trying the light!”, was my answer. But the real photo was already taken, in the exact moment she was smiling at her costume director, who was adjusting her hair with a hand. She was natural with a beautiful smile, few seconds later the same smile became a Hollywood one and the other photos, posed, were taken!

The manager was a little bit upset when, after few minutes, I told him I was done. Me, I was already happy with the real photo that was well saved in the memory card and in my mind. I ran back to my office, I downloaded it and edited a little bit the levels. In half an hour, the picture was ready to be published and the article to be read in 22 languages, all around Europe.

One more reason why I love my job: although our website is in all European official languages, so to be multi-linguistic as Europe is, only one photo is illustrating each daily article. A photo speaks more than 22 languages, all the languages of the world, and that photo is usually mine.

Your photographer,

Pietro Naj-Oleari ;-)