Friday, January 24, 2014

Photo web site: PHOSPHOR-OSTIA

I have completed the first phase of the Phosphor-Ostia website by populating the site with nearly 800 pictures of Ostia-antica.  Ostia-Antica was the harbor city of ancient Rome.  All the pictures are fully key-worded and searchable.  Many such terms as ‘brick’, ‘Trajan’, and ‘mithra’ are supported along with 924 other distinct search terms.  You have the option to display your pictures against a map background, in a gallery (the default) or on a timeline.  We hope you'll explore the whole site.  And uniquely for this type of site you have the option to display you search term in a tagmap so, for example, if you display 'Trajan' on a tag map you'll get all the other Ostia-related terms associated with Emperor Trajan.

Photos of Ostia, Italy shown against a map background.


Nearly all of the pictures are photographs which we took ourselves in 2005 and 2010.  The site is intended to be a reference source of pictures of Ostia.  And so the pictures may be used by scholars, researchers, or students for free.  Even though no compensation or permission is required we do like to hear how our pictures are being used.  You can e-mail us at info@phosphor-ostia.org, or bob@squinchpix.com. We very much hope that the users, you, will be in touch.

This website is new and in the first stages of production.  We hope to continue to put photographs on the site and are always looking for photographs of Ostia to display.  Some areas of Ostia are not well represented in pictures, notable Regio V.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Drs Robert Harp and Dr. Jan Theo Bakker.  Such a site, with the name PHOSPHOR, was originally their idea.  And, if you don’t yet know it, you’ll want to check out Dr. Bakker’s  Ostia website on Ostia Antica.


More soon.