Turn the side bar into a top bar so the image has the page width all to itself (optional), with some social sharing buttons just under the image.
Also, do not do long images. Break that long image up into multiple images, and let us click a next or a previous arrow (ability to use arrow keys would be awesome).
Anything that makes visitors have to scroll is bad. your visitors, do NOT scroll. Anything that isn't up top; they never see it (unless the site is awesome).
Might want to setup an auto-blogger so you can get enough images.
User uploads?