Having thumbnail pictures that you can click for a full image on is a great idea. you don't want customers to sit and wait while a huge page of pictures loads... they won't wait much more that 15 seconds, and they don't like to scroll down a long page. On the other hand, you want to showcase your craftsmanship, so it's important to show a lot of detail.
Here's a great example of a "projects" page on a Jaguar site I'm addicted to:
http://www.classicjaguar.com/projects.html
Notice how they have a "projects" main page, where you can choose a specific project. From those project pages, you can on thumbnails for larger images. It's a great layout that works really well.