Hi Sandy,
I'm not sure what might be causing this issue, but I would be a little bit wary. It is possible to corrupt the iPad's saved photos with the wrong kind of images (don't know the parameters for that, just that it can happen and did happen to me when I first got my iPad). It can cause unexpected crashes and instabilities even on a non-jailbroken device.
If these are special photos, I would HIGHLY recommend signing up for a free Google Picasa account. You get 2 Gb free, which is a lot. The privacy options are great. When you upload photos, you can choose your album settings all the way from completely private and password-protected, to sharing a link yet requiring a password, to not sharing publicly (meaning hidden from search) but anyone with the link, to completely public.
You can upload photos by email, so that is one way to upload from the iPad even if you can't save them. You can also upload from a computer via their desktop app or a web browser. My favorite app for this is called MyPics HD. You can batch upload photos and videos with the app.
It made me nervous when you mentioned the blank images-iPads can and do encounter problems which may require a software restore. It is rare but possible in this scenario that you would lose all saved photos, so I would strongly encourage you to have them backed up somewhere. Picasa is ideal because it doesn't require having to plug in your iPad. Also, say you had a flood or something that damaged both iPad & computer-this way you can still recover the photos at original resolution. (Just make sure to always choose "full size" for uploads).
Additionally, there are several Picasa apps that can cache photos on the iPad. That means that once you've uploaded them, when you go to view them they can be stored for easy viewing if you want to show the pics to someone and you aren't currently on wifi or a data connection.
Hope this helps,
Jenn
Sent from my iPhone using iPF