album folder location

Hi, I've enjoyed setting up gallery2 and appreciate the work that went into it. I have a question about the uploading and storing process. I am storing my photos and hosting the website on the same machine. I would like the directory in which I usually store my pictures (e.g., the My Pictures folder on windows machines) to be the directory the gallery2 or whatever web photo application accesses to store photos. Ideally I could just transfer pictures onto the server and run some "update database" script/function that would search through the My Pictures folder and create an album structure corresponding to the (possibly updated) directory structure. Part of this is to save time with uploading, since for my purposes I will not be screening any photos (everything I load onto the computer will be available), but a bigger part of this is I don't want to maintain to copies of every photo. (And I'd rather not upload, delete the originals, and only retain the gallery2 album/ copy). Perhaps gallery2 doesn't do this, but do we know of any other project? Many thanks,

Jason