Well, we have been here for a few years now...:-)
1. No, you have to do that either on the backend or before upload by attaching EXIF/IPTC data to your images. Zenphoto then will read this EXIF data.
2. You can't ftp to a database, technically impossible.... Of course you can add data to the database directly by using tools like phpMyAdmin but in that case using the backend is more convenient.