'The entire world is glowing in front of you': How Nat Geo photographers captured Pompeii

Cities across southern Italy were reduced to ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.  

Pompeii is the most famous among them, but it wasn’t the only ancient city ravaged by the volcano. The nearby cities of Herculaneum and Oplontis were also destroyed by deadly debris. New archaeological evidence from these three sites is reshaping how we understand ancient Roman life.  

This spring, Italian visual duo Paolo Verzone and Massimo Nicolaci travelled across their home country to bring this forgotten history to life. Their work is in the cover story of our August issue and features sweeping drone shots and dramatic photographs.

They spoke to National Geographic about how they experimented with movement and light—and why it’s important to stay nimble on assignment.   

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

Paolo, your grandfather was an archaeologist. How did that influence your career as a National Geographic photographer? 

Verzone: My grandfather taught me everything I know about archaeology. He started in the 50s with just a tent. I was on excavation sites since I was very young. Back then, there was not much interest in archaeology—not like there is today. 

When I see an excavation now, I can recognize who is the archaeologist, who is the assistant archaeologist, who are the specialized workers, and who is the engineer. When I went to Pompeii for this assignment, I felt at home. 

Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius have been photographed and filmed many times. How did you make this cover story look different? 

Verzone: Pompeii is a place where hundreds of discoveries are happening every year. We wanted to show the hidden gems. The most mysterious parts. The most hidden parts. So, we were hunting for artifacts that had never been seen before. 

Nicolaci: And you know, we are talking about Pompeii. There are probably thousands of images of the ruins online. It's not something that nobody has seen before. And the risk was repeating what we had already seen in the past.  While we looked for inspiration, we also stayed present in the field and looked at things through a cinematographer’s mindset. 

You had a number of visual references you used for inspiration. Can you tell us about one?  

Verzone: One reference was the movie Wings of Desire. It’s an incredible movie. It features an angel flying over Berlin, and you can see this angel flying down one of the main monuments there and flying over the city. That is the same thing Massimo did with the drone. We also love to play with light, to have the artifacts glow in a way. And we love to mix all of this media. We love how we can combine one story, mixing Massimo's videos, my pictures, a writer’s words. It's a fantastic way to tell a story. 

Nicolaci: It's amazing to have a different point of view, and Pompeii needs this point of view because it's huge. Only a drone or a helicopter can give you that perspective, showing how big it is and how far it is from Mount Vesuvius. 

We looked at Pompeii from the height of the volcano. The flight path was meant to simulate natural movements, like lava. And not because I want to scare anyone, but just to be natural, to be connected with the story.  

Did you experience any challenges getting this footage?  

Nicolaci: We had been invited to visit the site before Pompeii opened to tourists. Wake up was at 4:30 in the morning, we met at 5:00 a.m., and when we were in the hotel lobby, the drone pilot made a face like: "today we will do nothing.” I didn’t understand until I opened the door of the hotel. Outside was like a tsunami. There was crazy wind.   

But Paolo said, “Let's go, don't worry. Let's go to Pompeii.” So we went to Pompeii, and the sky was black, full of clouds, wind, and rain. It was like an apocalypse.  

Then we get inside Pompeii and... it was a miracle. From one moment to another: Bam! The sky opens, no clouds, and amazing light. And we could see Vesuvius with snow on top. 

We started running. We worried that in five minutes, ten minutes, or two hours the storm could return. We were racing against time to take pictures and videos with the drone. 

Chasing an image and a moment in the field is something you learn over time. How do you know when you’ve found a one-of-a-kind image? 

Verzone: When that moment comes, the entire world is glowing in front of you. Everything is buzzing through your eyes, in your mind. Then you start shooting. When you are in this state of mind... sometimes you don't even hear sounds. Sometimes when we are shooting, if Massimo is calling me, I don't hear him speaking to me. The same thing happens to him. Why? Because our minds are shifting to another element. The element of creation.  

But if conditions are not right to spark your imagination, you make it happen. You can add light or change angles. It is another part of the process I love because if nothing comes to you; you make it happen in a creative way. I learn the most during my assignments, because you have to make things happen. 

I’d love to hear more about how you create the dramatic lighting in your photos.  

Verzone: Like water, fire, air, earth,  I consider light one of the primal elements. This is something that for me has been always a priority. 

You would be really surprised by the unconventional tools we use. Everything can be a reflector [the flat disk photographers use to manipulate light].  

What have you used? 

[They both laugh.] 

Verzone: Oh. You would be surprised.  One time I had to take a portrait of six people inside a house. I just used a metal coffee tray. 

We use a lot of tools, like strobes. We just enjoy ourselves.

We see the perfect picture of, let's say, one of the artifacts that we took in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, a conglomerate. A conglomerate is a mass of objects, each of which has melted. We could have photographed it with a strobe, or just daylight. But we added more sources of light. Why? Because we liked it. Because it has more personality. 

We wanted to light it in a way that was extremely visible, to highlight the different components of this specific artifact.  

For a 2025 National Geographic story, we went inside a fusion reactor , and we found some reflective material. And we asked to keep it because it was one of the most beautiful reflector surfaces we ever saw! And the engineers there said, "No, you cannot take it, because it’s material we’re melting into a reactor.” But we saw one engineer working, and he threw a piece into the garbage, so we took that. It’s one of the most incredible reflectors I’ve ever seen in my entire life. 

Massimo has one part. I have another part.  

And in the Pompeii story, that is being reflected on the artifacts. 

I love that you're still learning and experimenting. 

Verzone: We like when mistakes happen. We chase mistakes. Because during some mistakes, we learned new principles that now we apply to our assignments. Half of the things we’ve learned, we learned by mistake.  

It's a continuous learning process. Every time we go on an assignment, we learn something. 

How did you balance photo and video in the field? 

Nicolaci: There are things that for sure work better with pictures and other things better with video. And the best part about working in a team is sharing thoughts and looking for the best way to tell the story in a visual way. 

Something I'm very proud of is that the lights that we use for the pictures are the same that we use for the videos, and vice versa.  There is this idea that for the filmmaking there’s one kind of light, and for the pictures, there is another kind of light. I think this is not true. It depends on how you work.  
 
What I try to do in every video clip I make is to imagine how the clip can be mixed with sound and what kind of light can work with the sound.  

Verzone: Massimo and I, we work perfectly as a team. We almost always agree on how to represent things. 

Did you enjoy yourself on this assignment?

Verzone: A lot. We were exhausted and laughing, which are two key elements. If you are not exhausted after one assignment, that means you didn't work. If you are not laughing and happy and joyful after one day in the field, it means something has gone wrong.