You have a whole heap of space, why would you overlay the text over the image, it also feels like their is more advertising space than content space.
An ideal layout would be all one page, it would have the text nicely under or around the images. Even if the ad in the top and side bars was still there at least they wouldn't seem like the most prominent thing on the page.
The NYTimes does all this quiet well, they page but at least their pages are quiet long. They may even have the same amount of ads on the page but the content is so much more dense that it doesn't feel spammy.
We've still got plenty of room for improvement, clearly, but the editorial team just recently introduced a new version of the gallery slides that get us a bit closer to what you're describing: http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2010/12/08/spacex-gets-ku...
I think the "all one page" idea is a good one, and I'll talk to the right folks about it. My only concern is that such a media-heavy page is going to be pretty rough in terms of page speed.
Yes, that's a gallery where the text is not overlaid on the photo, and the Google ads are not quite as tacky, but I think this is missing the point: the content in the OP doesn't belong in a photo gallery format at all.
Notice how many points the posts summarizing the article received - NOBODY to whom you actually want to advertise has any desire to sit around clicking through a gallery to read text.
Yes, your single page load speed may be good, but imagine how much slower your total gallery experience is. You can always have a load more content on scroll if it's really a problem.
An ideal layout would be all one page, it would have the text nicely under or around the images. Even if the ad in the top and side bars was still there at least they wouldn't seem like the most prominent thing on the page.
The NYTimes does all this quiet well, they page but at least their pages are quiet long. They may even have the same amount of ads on the page but the content is so much more dense that it doesn't feel spammy.