Home page images, bottom nav, basic q's not found in help

Love the look, and the 2 things I would like to know, do as I have used WP on a few sites, but I want the site to be a non blog type site, more informative with a gallery section (using the picassa plugin) and locked using the members access plugin.

So I would like these 2 things;

1. The home page. I am trying to see how the images appear. I made a post with nothing more than one image, the box appears, the mouseover shows the title, but no pic. If I click the box, I get the post with the image.

2. The bottom. As I said, I wanted a static site, nav such as, HOME, ABOUT, GALLERY, CONTACT. So I am playing around, added a category contact, but nothing. Added a post into that category, so it now apears at the bottom (but a box in the image section appeared).

So with #2, I want just contact to goto a contact page with a form (I can handle that), but don’t want that category to appear in the home image section.

That should be enough to get me started, thanks.