by Julian Morgan, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with photography. The process of recording a view in the most favourable light and from the best angle has been a lifelong quest, which I have combined with my other love, that of visiting classical sites. The satisfaction of getting a really good image in a wonderful location cannot be beaten, and it is a lucky man who can do all this in the name of work.

Over the past few years I have managed to build an archive of about 10,000 images, from which I can compile collections suitable for different purposes. The images are traditional transparencies, though most are also scanned onto CD-ROM. About ten years ago I was thrilled when I first discovered that this could be done with selected images, but these days I have all my slides scanned as a matter of course at the time of processing, largely because doing it myself is so incredibly tedious! A database and an indexing system on the computer makes it easy to retrieve items by keyword, so if I need a picture of anything, I can usually find it within a very short space of time indeed.

One drawback about a hobby like this is the expense. Equipment (cameras, lenses, slide scanner) is incredibly expensive. Film and the costs of processing it are perhaps the single highest cost area, which provides a good argument for going digital (for treatment of this, see Marc Knecht's case study on PowerPoint). I have resisted this until recently, as I felt I could always manage top quality pictures by staying with old-fashioned methods and spending time manipulating the images on the computer. The quality gap has closed, however, and I have felt a certain inevitability about making the change. Despite my eventual capitulation, I remain convinced that using a really good conventional camera and having the resulting image scanned will produce a result of the highest quality. Of course, one expense I have omitted to mention is that of visiting the sites, and my work has taken me to a large number of these in recent years!

The building of a photograph archive is a labour of love, so I have concerted my efforts recently in considering how best to use the results. In the UK, many of our students have to submit coursework assignments as part of their GCSE examinations at age 16. It has always proved difficult to get them to start off from the right point, in terms of primary source materials, which they are obliged to include. These days, however, it has become much easier, as I have created several collections of images specifically geared to this task. The Rome, ROMANA, Hellenika and Hispania Photo CDs each contain around 1000 images which can be included in students' work. They can make use of the Find facility in their word-processing software to find and access content of images, which are scanned at high resolution and which actually enhance their projects.

I am personally always reluctant to allow students to include materials sourced from the Internet. This is for three distinct reasons. Firstly, there are copyright issues about using materials without permission and from dubious sources. Secondly, the quality of so many of the images available is so poor: most web graphics are of low resolution and look dreadful when printed. Thirdly, the labelling is often unreliable and the students often lack information about what they have found, which in turn often means that I cannot give them marks for including the pictures in their coursework. The photo CDs I have assembled should make it possible to circumvent all these problems and I have noted that students now spend much less time assembling materials which are actually of better quality and more relevant than formerly.

A sample of the images described from a number of different classical sites will be posted up in one area of the CIRCE website, for free use. Please note from the ReadMe files attached that some copyright restrictions will apply, though these are not in any sense onerous. Check this out at http://www.circe.be.