The theme I am using has the k2 plugin for the image gallery. It's not surprising that some images load slowly because they are large. However, the issue is that it seems that it has to load ALL images before the first one is displayed. When I first load the page and immediately click on one of the thumbnails,  "loading..." is displayed for a very long time. However once the first image loads, the others pop up fairly quickly.

The other issue is that this happens every time I visit the page, so the images are not even saved in the user's cache.

Any thoughts on why this would be happening or some things I can try (aside from making images smaller). It would be better if images only loaded when they are clicked.

Thanks in advance!

I have solved my own issue. It seems that the page was getting hung up searching for thumbnails with an "@2x.jpg" extension. The debug console showed 404 errors. I created the images manually with this extension and it solved the problem. The page loads quickly now.

I believe this is part of an automated image processing feature however, I cannot find any settings for it.