I'm not sure if you can get the images to popup, but the rest can be done using the pagelines lite theme.
There is a bit of a learning curve with pagelines, but what you need to do is upload your pictures in the "box" section of the admin area instead of the posts area. You then have to configure your blog template to use boxes.
You can do this by going to the "drag&drop" area which is located inside the "pagelines" tab in the wordpress admin area.
1. Select "Page Templates" for template area
2. Select "Blog" as your type of page
3. Replace the "content" tab, in your active selection area, with a "boxes" tab
Now you must configure these boxes the way you'd like them to appear on your page. You can configure your boxes in the pagelines "Page options" area.
1. Select "blog" page
2. Click the "boxes" category in the settings panel
3. Under "box setup options" you can select your "box set", and the amount of boxes you'd like to display per row
3. Set "box image options" to show "only the image, no text", and enter the max size for these images.
There are a few extra steps, but this should get you started.
To download pagelines:
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/pagelines
If you need any help, email me at lunaticpics[at]yahoo[dot]com