one image per post on the homepage as a link to the detailed post

Hello,

I am new to the forum and have been customising the Atahualpa theme since yesterday and have answered the majority of my questions by searching this forum.

However, I have hit a wall. I want to display my posts like this:

http://www.septemberindustry.co.uk/

I've set up the 2 column posting on my site but whenever I add text to a post it appears on the homepage too which I do not want as it throws the images out of alignment and proportion.

This is also a problem when I include more than one photo in a post. It displays all of them on the homepage. Am I missing something really simple?

I want to be able to use one image per post on the homepage as a link to a post containing text and more photos.

Thanks for your time