Otto has created a very thorough primer to create a WordPress photo gallery without a plugin. He walks you through understanding pictures and galleries, creating and modifying an image template, and tweaking image and thumbnail sizes.
He reminds us:
You don’t really need plugins to create photo galleries. WordPress has a huge amount of gallery functionality built right in. You just need to make your theme smarter in order to take advantage of it.
Click through to read Photo gallery primer on Otto on WordPress.
Nevermind the embarrasing major gallery bug:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-gallery-feedback?replies=6
Hi Angie —
Thanks for pointing that out.
The beauty and power of a project such as WordPress is that you can get directly involved and contribute by highlighting bugs so that the developers can make those improvements.
I ping’d one of the core developers after seeing your comment, and they’ve now commented on the ticket relating to this issue. You can follow along and voice your opinion here: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/17485
Yes, very true. WordPress does have alot of power already built into it so galleries wouldn’t require a plugin at least for the common gallery presentations. Thanks!