What software and skills will I need to display these images

[harristown]

I am creating a personal website to display journal and photos (lots of) from an overseas hiking trip. My idea is to have a dynamically populated column of thumbnails down the side of the page. When a user clicks on the thumbnail I would like a lightbox-style (is that the right term?) image to appear.
Possibly with an optional caption (will this be too hard?).
Possibly with the ability to arrow through the photos from the lightbox.

My question is not immediately "how" (though suggestions are appreciated). Firstly I would like to know what sort of technologies I will need to employ, and how hard this will be to achieve. i.e. Php, Mootools, ...

If it is beyond me I *could* hard code all the images and just have a simply popup onclick.



Additional info:
My Web Design skills are limited to: barely use Illustrator, xHTML and CSS basics, good programming (theory) knowledge, and good Flash skills.

I am a high school Web Design teacher. I like to work on projects like this to improve my knowledge so I can answer all the questions my students have for me...

[AlexDawson]

The simplest way would be through JavaScript and using the jQuery lightbox script, its very easy to use and jQuery itself is easy to attach to your website...

http://leandrovieira.com/projects/jquery/lightbox/

[harristown]

Well that sounds easy enough. I will start playing around now.

Thanks.

[harristown]

Just implemented it for a few images. Brilliant. It will suit my needs entirely.

As a bonus, it is easy enough that I can teach my yr 11 students!

Thanks again.