Bryna, thanks! I'm using Visual Studios to create the Photo Albums (and the gallery which shows a collection of all photo albums the editor has added).

Here's what I've done - in the back office, I've created the document type that contains the following: photoAlbumTitle photoAlbumDate photoAlbumSummary Multi Picker of photoAlbumPictures photoAlbumCoverPhoto (a photo from the folder for photos selected in the multipicker to use as a cover photo for album')

Then in VS, I created the ViewModel based on the above fields, used the following query to pull in the data from Umbraco's tables:

    public ActionResult RenderListOfPhotoAlbums()
    {
           List<PhotoAlbumVm> model = new List<PhotoAlbumVm>();
            IPublishedContent photoList = CurrentPage.DescendantOrSelf("photogallery");

            foreach (var photo in photoList.Children.Where(x => x.IsVisible()))
            {
                var getSingleImageUrl = photo.Value<IPublishedContent>("photoAlbumCoverPhoto").Url;
                var list = photoList.Value<List<IPublishedContent>>("photoAlbumPictures");
                model.Add(new PhotoAlbumVm(photo.Name, photo.Value<DateTime>("photoAlbumDate"), 
               photo.Value<string>("photoAlbumSummary"), list, getSingleImageUrl, photo.Url, photo.Id));
        }

        return PartialView(PartialViewPath("_ListOfAlbums"), model);

And then in the view, I just pass the above model and then loop through each object and it's working great. My challenge is now is pulling the specific photo album by its photo.Id - I can't seem to get that particular query to work.

The following doesn't work:

 public ActionResult SinglePhotoAlbum(int photoId)
        {
            List<PhotoAlbumVm> model = new List<PhotoAlbumVm>();
            IPublishedContent photoList = CurrentPage.DescendantOrSelf("photogallery");
            var selectedAlbum = photoList.Children.Where(x => x.Id == photoId).First();

            DateTime date = selectedAlbum.Value<DateTime>("photoAlbumDate");
            string summary = selectedAlbum.Value<string>("photoAlbumSummary");
            var list = selectedAlbum.Value<List<IPublishedContent>>("photoAlbumPictures");

            model.Add(new PhotoAlbumVm(selectedAlbum.Name, date, summary, list, " ", " ", photoId));

            return View(model);
        }

This keeps returning a collection where I need a single object to return to the page, what's the correct way to go about this?

Perfect, because I was struggling to get this working and reverted back to using Umbraco's models and putting the logic in the view via Razor (which I don't want to do because then I have to use magic strings for all the different document properties to obtain their values). I think I was messing up the routing for Umbraco (which I don't entirely understand, gah. So much to process).

I'll attempt your suggestions and let you know if I managed to get this up and running. Thank you!!

Question for you - does the customer controller have to inherit from RenderMvcController or would SurfaceController do the job as well? (Currently I return a partial view related to the Photo Gallery in addition to the singlePhotoAlbum view).

Also, any reading you'd recommend to someone who is new to creating customer controllers and route hijacking? These are the two concepts I struggle w/ the most when dealing with Umbraco and the Umbraco documentation just isn't making sense to me. I need to see it in action to really understand what happens in different scenarios.

It really depends on your implementation. The way I did things in my own example, I inherited from RenderMVCController. You should also be able to get it to work with a surface controller.

If you are able to get it to work with both, you may find that you prefer one over the other for one reason or another.

I was able to get this to work but ended up using Umbraco's web.model.contentmodel and didn't use the custom controller that was created for all photo gallery related actions. Clearly, I need to do some more reading into RenderMVC Controllers and understanding how they work. I couldn't figure out how to change the routing so it uses id numbers per your response a week ago

Then you should be able to use the URL https://{domain}/MyPhotos/SinglePhotoAlbum?photoid=1

But the upside is that the site is up and running.

This is exactly what I did - and works well. Thank you for all of your help.