Customizing templates - Adding static positions to index

I am in the process of customizing the index page to have placement for a featured photo and a featured photo story/album.

http://www.heraldextra.com/gallery

I have created a new layout and am editing the albumBody.tpl.

I have been able to get the desired results by including a php file into the template with {include_php . That php file then contains @readfile method of pulling an image block.

My concern is that this is not being cached and I was wondering if there was a way using the {g-> method to pull a specific photo or album and pass it the same paramaters as the @readfile block method. I have tried several variations on the code below with no results:

{g->image item=$layout.item image=$layout.image}

Any ideas? Am I overlooking a tutorial somewhere on the {g usage?

Thanks for your help.

I tried that as well but it looks like embed.php, where the getImageBlock function resides, restates another function so an error is thrown. I was just hoping to somehow use Smarty to pull the photos.