Although a few of the photos presented on our website (especially prior to 2001) originated as color slides that were scanned and converted to jpegs, the majority of others have been taken with an Olympus C-3000Z , 3.3 megapixel digital zoom camera.  When shooting photos, we ordinarily use the SHQ resolution setting (super high quality, 2048X1536 pixels), which enables about 17-20 images to be stored on a 32MB memory card.   Photos are taken using optical (3X) to digital (max. 7.5X) zoom, on "macro" setting, with or without "spot-metering" and with or without "flash," depending on conditions (we prefer natural light).  Resulting images are stored as large jpeg files ranging in size from 1.1-1.7 MB.

We prepare our images for the web using standard photoediting software.  To reduce file size, images are first cropped (this is also done for compositional reasons, of course) and then resized to 25-30% of original.  Brightness, contrast, and gamma settings often are adjusted to improve image quality, and we have found that most photos, even those that are originally very sharp, appear better when published on the web if they are digitally "sharpened" on the lowest possible setting using our photoediting software.   When the final edited images are saved (we use a JPEG quality factor setting of 85-90 out of a possible 100), they typically have been reduced from a file size >1MB to a file of <100KB.

When we publish the images on our website, we almost always do so at full image size--we have found that reducing the published size of our images using our web-authoring tools tends to reduce their clarity too much.   If, after viewing it on our web page, we decide that an image needs to be substantially smaller, we make the sizing change using our photoediting software, then resave the image.  In summary, we have found that if we start with images having very high original quality (i.e., lots of pixels; very large file sizes), the appearance of the images, even after they have been resized to ca. 25% and saved at less than 100% jpeg quality (giving files <1/10th original size), is still very good.

We are by no means experts in either photography or computer photoediting (we have learned simply by trial and error), but if anyone has additional questions, we will be glad to try and answer them.   In the meantime, thank you for visiting our website!  Enjoy -