You don't need to be a programmer to get away from the blogging service web page type. Here's what you'll need:
1) A host. There are a million of them. The first one I went with went out of business but I'm impressed with the one I'm current with: IX Web Hosting. Cost ranges from $5-10 per month. Setup was a piece of cake. You just tell them what domain name you have. I was up in running in less than an hour.
https://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.dspmain
2) A File Transfer Program. Again, there are a million varieties you can download for free. They are simple and easy to use. You're just copying the html and jpeg files from your PC to the host server.
3) Microsoft Front Page. This probably came installed on your PC. It's very easy to make web pages. You don't even have to know HTML.
4) Some photo editing software. Used to reduce the size of your images, crop if desired, put text & arrows on your images. I use Paint Shop Pro which cost about $75, but you can probably find some freeware.
What I did was make about 20 web page templates in Frontpage. A template for 2 images, a template for 3 images, and so on. They are all the same, just different number of areas to insert images in.
When I'm making a page, I reduce each image to 700x525 pixels (75kb), then copy the images into the template. I type in my text, update the Previous and Next links at the botton, and that's it. Save the template to the desired filename, then upload it to the host.
Since it's not automated, it probably takes me a little longer than the automated ones, but it's not bad. You still have to write the text either way, and writing is the time-consuming part I think.