A quick plug for Pietro, our photographer. His is the most visible work in our team, as he illustrates just about everything we produce, and indeed provides even more illustrations without us producing anything to go along with it. And yet, poor lad, he’s not very visible himself. Perhaps it’s his shy retiring nature…

Pietro is a long-standing member of the team and has indelibly marked the style of the website as we know it today. It’s true that he buys agency pictures to illustrate many of our articles, but, by and large, you can’t beat original photos by someone who really knows what they are doing with a DSLR. And Pietro does.

These are shots of everyday life around the Parliament, people coming and going, doing their jobs

I think it’s fair to say that our photographer’s life changed radically in early 2009, when, as part of our wider plunge into social media, we set up Parliament’s Flickr account. Up to that point, pretty much the only outlet for his products were the articles we produced as a team for the website, meaning, in effect, two or three pictures a day. With the arrival of Flickr however, he has a new outlet for all those photos which happen “around” the ones that we use for articles. These are often just shots of everyday life around the Parliament, people coming and going, doing their jobs. It is a great opportunity to show the wider reality of the Parliament, a broader human picture, sometimes serious and sombre, mostly businesslike and bustling, sometimes quirky and light-hearted, but always rich and varied. These are pictures we want people to see, and also pictures we want to share. They are there on our Flickr account to be taken, reused, reposted – all we ask is that they are credited in the way we ask on the site.

Saadet Isil Aksoy, from the movie "Eastern plays" by Kamen Kalev, in Parliament this week for the Lux Prize ceremony (from EP Flickr page)

Of course, like anyone wrapped up in his art, Pietro sometimes doesn’t know when to stop. It’s a constant battle over how many photos to upload to Flickr. For him there’s always just one more: “surely I can put this one, it’s bellissima!”. Of course, he’s usually right: it is a great photo, but you have to know when to leave ‘em wanting more, right Pietro?

If you haven’t done so, go and have a look at our Flickr page. Of the recent photos, take a look at the sets on the Lux Prize, on the visit of 89 89ers to celebrate 20 years since the democratic changes in the EU’s eastern half and – just so this is not all about Pietro – the photos taken, with an outsider’s sideways glance, by our “guest photographer” Mimi Mollica. I’ll bet Pietro will say that these are not the best examples of his work at all – so maybe he could tell us in a comment which he thinks are the best on Flickr.

By the way, the photo illustrating this article is not of Pietro, as you may have realised, but the photo which greets you right now when you open our Flickr page, and which somehow prompted me to write this post.