[Plugin: NextGEN Gallery] Bypass shortcode?

Is there any way to display an image from a post without using the shortcode? Something along the lines of “the_permalink();”?

I’m working on a category page (projects), which will pull the newest post from five sub categories (kitchens, bathrooms, etc), to guide users to that category. The page pulls up the newest post from each subcategory, and I’d like to display a medium sized version of the first image from that post’s gallery. The category page layout is completely different than a single post page, so I can’t use the content for the post. Is there a list of tags I can check out somewhere, so I can figure it out?