I've used Blogger for a year and find it very easy and stable. Blogger is free, offers numerous templates, tech support, and if you know a little about HTML code you can tweak your blog for some real customization. Their support groups offer many tips and help. If you do a Google search you will also find many people who offer lots of help on how to use it and customize it. Using Gmail has also worked well for us.
For photo storage I mainly use PhotoBucket, but also use MyPhotoAlbum and Webshots. With Blogger you can upload photos to your blog directly from your computer.
I'm interested in WordPress and like the way it looks, but will have to look into it when I have more time. Right now fishing and retirement is taking up most of my time.