Photo Gallery with Category support

Hello I, would like to set up a large Photo gallery that makes use of Categories and subcategories, that is also friendly to use both from a upload and use perspective. One day I would like offer a eCommerce solution to order digital prints.

Thus far I have been able create a hierarchical category structure with posts in gallery format. This has made it very simple to search through the use of Category widgets (FoCaL), typed searches, and good old clickthroughs as my images have a variety of criteria. Such as location, Type of image, Theme. and many others.

However when the required Gallery is located the word press display is very unfaltering. I would love be pointed towards a way to improve the look of the built in Gallery display, or find a gallery plugin that supports a robust category inventory system that is tied in a search.