Photos on the web do have disadvantages to real life but they also have advantages. Today we took new photos of museum objects.  We hired a professional photographer, Summer Derrick who photographed about 25 objects.  Some of them required the use of white gloves.  Two quick points about the photos.  1.  The high resolution allows the students to see things that they would not be able to see with their bare eyes.  I noticed that while seeing the objects live in the museum, I could not see the detail I could in the high resolution photographs.  2. When kids are in the museum they cannot always handle them.  Objects that are usually behind glass cannot be studied very well or the museum does not want them to handle certain objects because they are too delicate.  Rich made a good point today in that the photographs bring the students closer to the objects.  A good example is the picture of the snake skin.  This was a very delicate item that students would never be allowed to handle.  With the photo they can’t ruin the artifact.