hi there,
Not that I'm a computer wizzard... but I know what you mean and this is how I share my photo's!
You got Yahoo messenger you said ..
((so I also have Yahoo 360 (where you can write blogs handy when you got friends or family far from you) and through that I came to Flickr. thats the easiest for me sindce than it shows the photo's also on my 360 page..))
But you also can use flickr for jusd sharing your photo's and sending the e-mails from there to your family and ofcourse it will be a e-mail whit a link in it so they go direcly to your Photo's
Welcome to Flickr - Photo Sharing
you can atleast take a look there and see if this was what you had in mind.
Hope it helps, if you need more help I can try to guide you as much as I can.
greetings from holland