Definition of Albums vs Post Attachments

[hiker]

Hi, I'm still learning a few things, I'm coming from phpbb2 and hoping to go live with vbulletin 4.0.2 within a month.

I've just got a general question about Photo Albums and if it's something I think my members will use.

The nature of my forum is an outdoor community; People hike a trail and such, then post photos & attachments of the trail, things like that.

How are the albums incorporated into this? Can you post something as an attachment, and then tag it into your album for later use? Or do people usually create the album first, and then link to those photos in their post?

What is your usual use of the album vs attachments?

I'm looking at the mods that show the "latest/random album photos" in a bar across the top and was wondering if that could just read the latest user attachments as well.

Thanks.