[Plugin:NextGen gallery] Activate slideshow from thumbnail on archive page

I have a situation where I am creating a Portfolio page with different portfolio items as post and the page itself will be a category or a page that pulls from portfolio category.

I need to create a system where all posts will have a thumbnail (could be post thumbnail or thumbnail for a gallery) and when a visitor clicks on the thumbnail, the gallery associated with the post should play in a lightbox.

You can check it in progress here – https://whitehatsweb.com/yuri/category/portfolio

So ideally there should be a thumbnail under each post title with a set of images that trigger when you click on that thumbnail.

I am open to suggestions how this could be achieved, however, we need to have it customizable from the backend.

Thanks,
-tejas