How do I store photos on an external hard drive? Recommendations for purchasing one?

P.S. - I am extremely new to using a Mac and trying to convert from a PC. I purchased and installed a Time Capsule thinking it would act as an external hard drive that I could routinely retrieve photos from but after looking through some of the other support answers I think I might have been wrong about this. I have thousands of photos that I need to store off of my hard drive and yet be able to easily access them for making books, calendars etc.
PPS - Please keep in mind I am new (and struggling) with learning all the functions. I need directions even a child could understand, Thanks

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD

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