ok, so lets say we wait until Thursday so everyone can share their idea, then Thursday I lined up the options and y'all make a decision....
the picture has to be small in both pixels and kb. The original logo is 251x115 and a total of 8kb. The fact this is a graphic with limited colors and not a picture will make it small and fast to load.
the last version of Lake Conine I made, the one without captions is about 46kb and I have it cropped and resize to 300x165 pixels.
Len version of it is a bit larger, 500x333 but about the same kb size.
Captions will add around 10kb to the picture size.

In overall, I am not worried about the size since i am sure not many here are in dial up connections, plus once the browser caches the picture these sizes are irrelevant. In my opinion the actual pixel size might be more important as we dont want to push the threads way down because of the banner is so tall, so i suggest to keep any art no taller than 170 pixels, wide dont really matter much.

Let the populace decide...

Cropped picture with captions on the side OR no caption at all.


Cropped picture with captions in the picture.


that's all I have.