The first five posts of new users are moderated; that's why they weren't showing up. I believe that was explained in your registration e-mail.
As far as I know, there is no way to accomplish that with Zenphoto currently. Only top-level albums can be assigned to a user/group. I'm fairly sure that there's no such hack available either.
If you would prefer to use Zenphoto, perhaps there is some other hierarchy of albums that would suit your needs and work with Zenphoto. If you describe what you're trying to accomplish, perhaps someone can suggest an alternative that would work.