DEVELOPER-812 Added #{site.base_url} to the requested hrefs

By absolute paths, I assume you mean "/research/photos". In which case I agree, as that is what prompted this fix in the first place. These don't work on staging for PRs. 

Why do you think an absolute URL (#{site.base_url}/research/photos) is better than a relative one (./photos) in this case?

I would have thought an absolute URL was more brittle. If /research was renamed or moved, it would break all the absolute links.