Got an email to say an upgrade was available to Zen Photo- so I followed it through but I got an error. as below.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[' in /home/jmcgerr1/public_html/photos/zp-core/functions.php on line 291

Please try the 1.4.9 Support build as it has been corrected there.

Thanks - this software was included on my hosting service as an optional third party install. My hosting site is arvixe.com using the softaculous apps installer which, as I understand only links to the particular apps own installer.
I am taking it that you recommend a manual install?

Yes, softaculous is a third party installer we are not invovled with so we can't "recommend" it. But in any case it only has the official releases. So the support build needs to be installed manually in any case.

Another quick fix would be to enable PHP 5.4 on the server as the code in question is accidentally 5.4+ only.

Thanks for this message. I had the same error message. Enabling php 5.4 didn't solve the problem for me, but using the support build did.
Cheers
denis