Make categories turn into galleries?

Hello,

I would love advice on how to achieve a simple photoblog look.

I would like to have the following:

Home page displays latest post in a good sized image.

The categories I have created form a previous version of my photoblog would be listed in a side bar. If you click on a category, the result would be a page that has a mosaic gallery of thumbnails of that category and the user would then select a image to start a slideshow with “next” and “previous” prompts.

I believe these are very straight forward ideas, the one thing I was looking for, searching for is how to have each category, when clicked, to result in a thumbnail page and slideshow viewer, a gallery?

Sorry if this all sounds very basic, but I would appreciate some guidance. the site is

henrycline.com

thanks very much