The host I have to use apparently doesn't allow external calls and referenced the htaccess file. I'm not sure what he's talking about but for whatever reason I get an error parsing the htaccess file when I try to browse to zenphoto.

Is there any way around this?

OK...Apparently it's not. I think I figured out that it's only for the Mod rewrite stuff.

Yep, you got it. Turn $conf['mod_rewrite'] = false; in your zp-config.php file to disable it and .htaccess isn't needed.