@Willr - Thanks for your reply and pointing out the tutorial!
I'm going to have to read this tutorial a couple more times. In the mean time I wanted to ask a question about what I am specifically looking to do. I think what I need to accomplish might have one more level to it than this tutorial demonstrates.
Basically I have a page type that can have up to 6 mini galleries. I've already created this page and have used the (static) custom field approach to create fields for the title and description of each gallery. On the page template side of things a gallery area will only show if the gallery title is filled in.
So each mini gallery can have up to 12 images. Each DataObject(?) needs to have a thumbnail, large image and a caption. I'm not using any kind of gallery module. I'm using some jquery scripts to show thumbnails that open in lightboxes and all of the thumbnails are contained in a slider. I just need away to allow the admin to add images to each mini gallery. And then I need to be able to output these images.
So just thinking outloud, setting up the Image DataObject will be like setting up a student ...Thumbnail, large image and Caption instead of First Name, Last Name and Nationality. And in some sense a mini gallery will be like a Mentor ...where it can have numerous images associated with it.
I guess where I'm getting stuck is how to associate each mini gallery to a page, allow a page to have more than one mini gallery and link the mini galleries to their corresponding gallery area that already exists. (or can potentially exist). For instance the current page template has custom fields GalleryTitle01, GalleryDescription01, GalleryTitle02, GalleryDescription02, etc. (up to 6). A single gallery area will output GalleryTitle01, GalleryDescription01 and the corresponding mini gallery.
Any feedback you are willing to share on this would be great. Thank you!