splitting up pages for thumbnails in php

[MyFriendIsATaco]

i was wondering the approach other people take to doing this. i want 9 thumbnails per page. what i've done in the past is just for each page, it makes a call to the database and grabs every entry, then only uses the ones it needs. is that the most efficient way? is there a way to grab the total number of entries in a table? and is there a way to select say entries 9-17 only?

thanks.

[ps] i want the pages in the format of photos.php?page=2