Custom Image Gallery

Hey all,

I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction for creating a custom image gallery that functions like this:

http://www.thesmallstakes.com/gallery.php?page=1

I am a rails developer and am use to having an object and then iterating through it in a view and creating the HTML of a page exactly the way I want it. I am new to drupal and am unable to find the best way to create a custom page the way I need it. I would like to use the drupal paging system to display only 16 or 25 thumnails on a page, and then have a custom ajax function to load a larger thumnail on the right-hand side of the block of thumnails with some meta data at the bottom, very similar to the link I posted above.

If someone could at least attempt to explain to me how I would do something like this, that would be very helpful.

Thanks!