I am having trouble just starting the setup. I believe it has something to do with my webservice (justhost). I have uploaded all of my files as in the instructions (www.mikehlee.com/gallery/zp-core/setup.php). Whenever I try to direct my browser to that location I only get a 500 message.

I am a total noob to this and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I have been reading in the forums some things about "installing" apache, mysql, and php but I'm not sure exactly what that entails (localy? remotely?). Please help

Check some of the basics on your server: Is PHP installed and configured? Are files ending in .php considered WEB pages? Are the file permissions on the zenphoto files and folders such that the WEB server can access them?

From the control panel of my website it says

Apache version 2.2.11 (unix)
PHP version 5.2.9
MySQL version 5.0.77-community

The PHP is configured but by the provider (justhost) and it has a list of settings none of which I understand

Looks like you are getting a 500 internal server error. I've usually seen this happen with a conflict with a htaccess file.

My suggestion would be to contact your hosting provider and let them know that you are getting a 500 internal server error and that if it's possible for someone to look at the server logs and try to pinpoint the issue.

Other than that, I am not too sure where else to go from there.
Hopefully there is a zen photo guru out there that can possibly steer you in a closer direction.