Trying to figure out what I need to learn??

I have a website paulchinetti.com/everyday (http://www.paulchinetti.com/everyday) I want to take all my pictures as thumbnails and put them on one page as a huge grid. As you look at the grid and are scrolling around it. If there is a picture that you want to see bigger you would click on that picture and the background would fade out and that picture would come forward and enlarge.

So much question is what do I need to teach myself to make this happen?

Any help would be really appreciated, I am on christmas break now and I want to try to start learning this over break.

Follow the link below,
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/#how

Click one of the thumbnail images on that site and see if thats what you need.

Personally I think it works very well and I have recomemended it before and will be using it on one of my sites soon.

-trigger