EXMOUTH'S National Trust property A la Ronde is capturing its entire collection on camera to forever preserve its treasures.

EXMOUTH'S National Trust property A la Ronde is capturing its entire collection on camera to forever preserve its treasures.

Freelance museum photographer Simon Harris will photograph 3,000 items, which will allow visitors greater access to the collection and allow more detailed information on the objects.

The 30,000-plus shells in the house are to be divided into batches instead of photographed individually.

Mr Harris said: "At A la Ronde, the fragility of many of the objects has required very careful handling, and due to conservation restrictions on the light levels in the house, using high-powered studio flash units was out of the question.

"Instead we use very low powered tungsten light sources which will not damage the objects but still allow us to take the photographs.

"The ready availability of digital photography nowadays has meant an enormous amount to this project.

"Previously the objects were catalogued using black-and-white photographs each fixed to an index card, and whilst this system has served us well for many years, these records are now being migrated to a networked database system which will allow us much more flexibility in how we access and use the data.