This is a quick experiment to see whether and how blog platforms change the original digital file. These days you would expect the images on professional blogs and websites to be close to the original.

The selected image for the experiment is Mark Daragh’s 5×4 image of a dead  grass tree  (Xanthorrhoea australis) that he created with  Fujifilm’s Provia and then submitted to the View Camera Australia’s   April 2026 online exhibition.  Provia is a professional-grade, daylight-balanced color reversal (slide) film known for its exceptional versatility, fine grain, and accurate, vivid color reproduction. 

The reason for the experiment is that the published image on the VCA’s online exhibition is quite different to the original file. Is it WordPress that is the problem, or a particular WordPress theme/template. I have previously experimented with the Posthaven publishing system,  which retains the richness of the original Provia file. So is WordPress the problem?

Below  is Mark Daragh’s 5×4 image of a dead  grass tree  (Xanthorrhoea australis):

If you scroll down VCA’s  blog page you can see  this  image in the VCA’s online exhibition. and discover that the image   in the online exhibition on the VCA WordPress blog is very different to the above.

Here is the published version on the VCA blog:

What is immediately noticeable is the absence of Provia’s vivid color reproduction. The image has been so de-saturated that it has been drained of the rich colour of the Provia file.   So something has definitely gone wrong.

However, experimenting with the particular WordPress publishing system used for Light Paths shows that the published image looks looks okay. It retains the vivid color reproduction.