Thank you for your reply. I am actually using the Seblod out-of-the-box User Avatar field. The stored string is fairly short (images/members/20130622_082829.jpg) and the d/b field type is set as varchar(255) ... was that way OOTB, I did not change it. If I upload a different image with the same name length, it works just fine ... it's just once-in-a-blue-moon situation but when it does happen, Seblod inserts those annoying errors on the user rendered page.
Seblod team, please consider trapping the error and displaying a user-friendly message. E.g. "There appears to be a problem with your uploaded image - please upload a new one." Even better, is there a way to inspect the image prior to saving the form and if something is wrong, keep the form open and display an error to select a different image? This is also true if the image size is bigger than allowed. The form saves and then the error is displayed... at that point, the user has no chance of correcting it because their account has not yet been activated.
Thank you for the considerations and also if there's an idea or two around how I could prevent the error described in the original post, that would be awesome. Thanks a lot, P