Hey,
I'm continuing to try to troubleshoot this and I've made it a step further. Perhaps this info will help you help me

.
I think the URL is getting trapped in this particular line of the mod-rewrite of the htaccess file, but I'm not positive yet and I'm starting to experiment at this point.
# Catch-all - everything else gets handled in PHP for compatibility.
RewriteRule ^(.*)/?$ index.php?album=$1 [L,QSA]
I think this is perhaps that the server is seeing the "/" or "%2F" in the album variable as a directory... as though it's ignoring the fact it's a PHP page with a querystring, or it's requesting a 403.shtml error page (indicating a permission error?) and then when the file doesn't exist in the root it's hitting that catch-all above. This is causing the album variable to come through as 403.shtml. See my phpinfo() environment variable list below.
PHP_SELF /index.php
_REQUEST["album"] 403.shtml
_GET["album"] 403.shtml
_SERVER["GATEWAY_INTERFACE"] CGI/1.1
_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"] www.highcountryphotos.com
_SERVER["HTTP_MOD_SECURITY_ACTION"] 403
_SERVER["HTTP_MOD_SECURITY_MESSAGE"] Access denied with code 403. Pattern match "(\\.\\./\\.\\.|/|(http|https|ftp)\\:/)" at ARG("album") [id "HG2008030101"][rev "1"] [msg "phpThumb album RFI"] [severity "NOTICE"]
_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"] http://www.highcountryphotos.com/zp-core/admin.php?page=edit&album=appalachian-mountain-photography-competition
_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"] album=403.shtml
_SERVER["REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING"] album=403.shtml
_SERVER["REDIRECT_REDIRECT_REQUEST_METHOD"] GET
_SERVER["REDIRECT_REDIRECT_STATUS"] 403
_SERVER["REDIRECT_REDIRECT_mod_security_relevant"] 1
_SERVER["REDIRECT_STATUS"] 403
_SERVER["REDIRECT_URL"] /403.shtml
_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] GET
_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"] /zp-core/admin.php?page=edit&album=appalachian-mountain-photography-competition%2F2008
_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"] /index.php
_SERVER["SERVER_SIGNATURE"] <ADDRESS>Apache/1.3.41 Server at www.highcountryphotos.com Port 80</ADDRESS>
_SERVER["SERVER_SOFTWARE"] Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.7a
_SERVER["PHP_SELF"] /index.php
_SERVER["argv"] Array
(
[0] => album=403.shtml
)
Thanks so much for the insight!
Joe