We do count all records into the total so event registrations will increase your database. But what you can do post-event is to archive all event attendees - archived records do NOT count into the total. The downside of course is that you can not email those people or do anything else - unless you restore them from archive.
We do not provide bulk upload for pictures at the moment We might do that but actually would encourage you to instead look at a dedicated photo-sharing website like SmugMug, Photobucket or Flickr - and then embed their album into your Wild Apricot pages. The reality is that a dedicated photo-sharing service will always have much nicer and more robust features than similar built-in functionality of any hosted service including ours. We are actually talking to SmugMug about partnering - they give free pro accounts to non-profits.
Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot