i have a couple questions about web hosting, as i am a complete noob when it comes to that. i am trying to make 2 different companies, one for photography, one for drop-shipping auto parts, and i need to make some websites for these.
1. what is a good web host for sales websites?
2. how do i upload pictures and construct the website? does the host company supply the necessary software or what?
3. i have dreamweaver and can learn how to use it, is this a good software to use?

I can offer my opinion on a couple differeny ones I have used.

5dollarhosting.com very bad, we used them at my business and had nothing but problems with their reliability

theplanet.com they offer primarily dedicated servers, but I have nothing but the best things to say for them, great prices, and service, but you probably wont need a dedicated server maybe ever.

godaddy.com They usually offer free hosting credits with the purchase of a domain name, but i think their base package is only like $4 or 5 a month and does the trick. I find their email server configuration cumbersome and a little unreliable though.

3ix.org I use these guys currently for a personal web page and mail server and they are dirt cheap, and I have no complaints so far, and they are the cheapest i could find, I basically use them primarily for just a pop3 server.

As far as selling something on the website if you are going to have a shopping cart, most checkout services you will use- ie paypal, clickbank, or ccd processing services such as ultracart, generally offer scripts in the common web languages to accommodate whatever you need.

To upload your work simply requires a ftp(file transfer protocol) client- or sftp(secure file transfer protocol) depending on the server. I use winscp for sftp, and wsftp if I only need ftp.

Dreamweaver is pretty much the industry standard, you cant really go wrong with it, it will code for the web in the majority of web languages.