ActionScript 3.0 :: Why Are 100 - 300kb Images Taking So Long To Load Even On A ADSL Connection

Some background info: I'm trying to create a website to upload my photography portfolio to; the URL is as such [URL] So what I have done is create a parent page and created a variable that functions as a loader. Whenever a button is clicked an external swf file is loaded into that variable. And within those external swf files are additional buttons that will load an image into another loader.

Here's my question; for those of you who've tried the site will realise the images are taking an eternity to load, everything I learn about actionscript tells me this should not be the case. Each of the photographs are between 100 - 300kb in file size and really should not take more than a few seconds. This leads me to conclude theres something wrong with my code.

The code itself is nothing special, in fact it is the absolute most newbie way of creating a function eventlistener for every button. This is the code for the parent page;

var loader = new Loader();
var Xpos:Number = 440;
var Ypos:Number = 380;

[code]...

Here is where things got hectic for me for a while. I tried using the same type of code in the parent page for the external swf pages, for some reason it does not work, I had use the loader component (component's instance name is interfaceloader);

Product_A.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,Produc tA);
function ProductA(event:MouseEvent):void {
interfaceloader.source = "Product_A.jpg";
}

Once again to summarise my issues; why are 100 - 300kb images taking so long to load even on a ADSL connection and is my code part of that problem?