it appears that the photo data is not being deleted in the database when the user deletes their photo.
this results in the writing of an error message to the access log for each missing photo. this in turn is slowing down page generation.
I have followed the upgrade path and am at 7.3.3 - so perhaps it is the result of an error that exists in the upgrade path, or a mistake i made. plain jane site. default.
default plugins are the only installed at the moment.