I’m far from an expert at “photoshopping” images. I’ve learned quite a bit, but I’m still largely what I’d call a “novice” at the finer art of post-processing photos. Hey, I still think in terms of film sometimes…I only joined the digital photo revolution a year or two ago. :)

Usually I try to keep photos more natural looking - that is, with colors that aren’t overly saturated. Saturation gives many images a quick boost of the ‘eye-pop’ factor, which is why I think so many digital-photographers do it, but it’s certainly not natural. Lately however, I’ve been doing the over-saturated thing a little more. Sometimes I like the effect, sometimes I don’t…and I still can’t decide if I like it that much overall. It always feels to me that unless you have the perfect lighting/exposure and the perfect image-clarity, over-saturation mostly makes a photo seem surreal..more akin to the bright colors of animation than a photograph. Also, the more one plays with color saturation, the more the “natural” colors in photos begin to look a bit dull, and I can quickly lose perspective of when too much is too much.

So I’m not sure if it’s something I want to make a habit, even if it means my photos have less of the ‘pop’ factor.

This deer was wandering in a small grassy field, between a coastal hiway and someone’s fancy house.

They look naked when they have no spots.

A lazy big cat lounging around a small zoo in San Jose.

Due to a server switch to a version of PHP5, some of the programs I used to categories blogs and galleries have become a pain to use. For instance, plug-ins not working properly, requiring funky workarounds invented by me, and I can’t login to my 4images Gallery Admin Panels without switching the PHP setting on the webserver to use PHP4 instead of PHP5. Yes, I tried looking for a solution, but if there was a working one, I didn’t find it. Or I bet I wouldn’t understand it. Since it’d be more trouble than it’s worth to fix things, it makes it a fine time to re-shuffle. It’s been months since I’ve done any website work/updates anyway, so why not.

BUT - there’s always a “but” - keeping in mind that I don’t have the time/inclination to constantly “mess” with tweaking websites anymore, I think I’m going to simplify. This blog program by WordPress isn’t my favorite - but it’s been around a long time, so it’s still updated with fair frequency. I can very easily upload photos directly via it’s admin panel, in a manner that I personally can live with, so I can stop having to take that extra step to post pictures that I always did before. A lot of people use WordPress, so the user-support is fairly good. That was one thing I hated about 4images - if you only speak English, their support kinda stinks …

But most importantly in terms of using WordPress - there was a theme/skin that I could live with that I didn’t have to alter one iota of .css. Sure, it doesn’t have quite the personal touch, but it’s clean, uncluttered, and useable. Hopefully it’ll be a long time before I can’t get this program to work with the server, and I shall be happy.

For a while at least, a link to the last blog will remain in the sidebar menu. And “by a while” what I really mean is “until the next time I remember to actually check up on/clear out my disorganized directory structures.”