Do you want to build a website about your snakes, or do you want to learn to build websites?

If the former, I would recommend finding someone who hosts Drupal, Mambo/Joomla, or any other of the umpteen million content management systems. A good CMS will let you build your site using the website itself, so you only need to upload your images and put the content in.

If it's the latter, then I would recommend going with something like dreamweaver, since it will let you build your site in either WYSIWYG or markup, and while it's not the best tool out there, it is great for beginners since you are able to flip back and forth, and can learn by example.