thanks for thinking about it, sorry for my inelegant explanation. apologies for the verbose nature of the text below, trying to give as much info as i can.
i don't want to install into http://chickenwriggle.com/jack, because we just had another son, so i want an album http://chickenwriggle.com/charlie. maybe another one for cats, maybe one for other children's parties etc.
the net effect i want, is as if i had installed into the public_html (the web root on hostmonster setups), but it is actually in a different directory with a .htaccess in the web root translates the requests to the directory that zenphoto is installed in.
this all must work because that is the way my subdomain is configured.
it all works as i have it configured for the first page requested for a session at chickenwriggle.com/ however, the subsequent links that zenphoto generates all have the install directory included in them, as demonstrated in the original post:
http://chickenwriggle.com/zenphoto_cw/jack/
instead of
http://chickenwriggle.com/jack/
if it doesn't make sense i will just end up installing in the root of chickenwriggle.com and be done with the slightly messy directory structure.
cheers
michael