This picture isn’t very sharp and the crab’s “face” isn’t clear because it was in a coastal tidepool and it’s not easy to shoot through water - but I still like it as a kind of crab-action shot. The little guy was busily eating whatever had been in the second shell…you can see one of his claws clutching a bit of meat. Not long after I took this picture, another hermit crab came along and they battled over who would get to eat the rest of the feast for quite some time. It was entertaining.

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.”