Does wp-load.php grant access to the wordpress database?

Hello,

I have a wordpress website and I have a few custom pages stored in my public_html directory that require wp-load.php and this allows me to get the header and footer.

I am just wondering if wp-load.php also allows you to access the wordpress database tables or do I connect to this database as usual with the required mysql code?

Below is basic snippet of page. This shows the header at the top, the footer at the bottom and leaves the rest of the site available to be custom designed.

<?php
require('wp-load.php');
get_header();
?>
Your page content here.
<?php get_footer(); ?>

I want to be able to access the wordpress database and retrieve image paths from the two tables I have created within that database to use those paths as image sources. I’ve done this rather than use blob as I wish to keep my database backups fast.

Any help would be massively appreciated,

James.