Ed,
There isn't much that can be done on the website side to speed up the photos other than make them smaller or cut down the quality of the image.
There is something that you can do on you PC to help out a little. Make sure that you go into your browser and delete your temporary internet files once a week or so (depending on how much surfing you do). In I.E. you can find it under Tools and then Internet Options. Other browsers...you'll have to look around. All of those old files are being loaded in the background and chewing up memory which will slow down the loading of webpages.
If you have Windows 2000 or XP you can go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools and run Disk Cleanup. This will also clean up the temporary files along with a couple of other house keeping items.
Hope this helps,
Duane