Photo Gallery vs. Photoblog

I’m in the process of redesigning my site (https://www.copperleaf.org), which is primarily a photo gallery. I’m strongly considering on having the site be more of a blog instead of just a gallery. In looking at different sites that are photoblogs and galleries, I’m leaning torwards the idea of not having a separate gallery, but instead have blog categories in which a post is some words with a bunch of thumbnails. (In searching through this site, I believe there are a couple of different plugins that make this easier.)
My question is, for those who have played with photoblogs, the plugins, galleries, etc., what is your opinion? It seems to me that categories could be layed out like albums. The plugins I’ve been reading up on so far are pictorialis and wp-photos.