Image help

I’ve migrated from Nucleus, partly because of the schism that seems to arisen there. Well, I’m still using Nucleus at work, but I’m trying WP for myself and so far I am very impressed, though I haven’t yet played around with skins or templates or CSS.
Anyway, one thing I’d like to know is how to place a small picture on a blog posting. I looked at the Photo plug in, and I confess I somewhat skimmed the thread because it seemed to be mostly about difficulties in getting the plug-in to work.
Eventually I’d like a photo gallery, but for now just some images in postings would do.
Is there a simple way to achieve that, without going the plug-in route just yet?
Thanks
Jeremy