thank you soooo much to everybody that responded! i actually posted this over 3 forums in total. the results overall were:

thumbnails - 25
viewable sized photos - 15

slightly inconclusive, as both thumbs and full-size images seem to have their time and their place.

Quote Originally Posted by apple2 View Post
I'd use flash to make the small thumbs grow when you mouse over them. That way you can look at the images before you click, while still maintaining a clean, short page.
the thing with flash is...i hate it, lol. i'm also a photographer and to see a site built of flash makes me cringe, for real. hate, hate, HATE flash! also, i haven't actually found a flash plugin that does what i want it to do on my site, anyways.

i find flash sometimes slow to load, and has many more complications than what i currently use.

i agree it would be MAGNIFICENT to see the thumbs grow, but that's just something i don't have the skill to do.

i built my website literally from scratch, with no prior website knowledge whatsoever, so it's definitely been cumbersome for me, and a great learning experience.

i think i am going to have to alternate between thumbs and full-size images. i would like to be able to use a combination of full-sizers along with thumbnails underneath, but unfortunately the way i have myself set up it's just not going to work. each blog post that contains photos has it's very own gallery - named by the date posted. that's because i use an external plugin to display my images, as Wordpress's media gallery is less than ideal. if i did a combination of both, it would require me to use both the WP interface as well as the NextGen (the plugin)'s interface. a bit more of a headache than i want for some simple blog posts.

again, thanks so much to everybody that gave me input, it was much appreciated, even if i am still lost