I really appreciate the fact you're spending time taking care of the forum (not being sarcastic), I don't want to be entirely negative. But I have to say, I think it would be good to hire a designer. Just because we're photographers and have a certain sense of aesthetics or can mess around with some CSS files certainly doesn't make anyone a good designer.
- The skin is too contrasty, this is primarily a site where people read, you'd want something lower contrast to make reading comfortable.
- The type is too small and hurts legibility
- Not sure what the relevance of the color scheme, blue and orange ? Again, another high contrast choice that's a little aggressive to be honest.
- There's no clear visual hierarchy between the top menus, side menus and actual content.
- Some unnecessary visual elements (some edges are rounded others not, multiple color bars at the bottom, bright blue background on header image attracts undue attention, background stripes etc)