did i just lose all my photos??

I have a macbook and bought an external drive for it in August. I take a lot of photos, so to clear up some space I moved my iphoto library and extra photos hanging out in my folders to the external drive. Everything has been fine since then - tonight I opened my iphoto to import some photos and it says there are no photos. I try opening it from the "iphoto library" icon on my external drive and still nothing. I don't even know where else to look right now or what to do next...any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hold down the Alt key when you click on iPhoto album and select 'Choose Library' to choose the one on your hard disk.

It's hard to say what happened exactly, but chances are you photos are NOT gone -- just your access to them is hampered via some corruption.

First question: do you have a backup? If the answer is "no," punch yourself in the face -- HARD -- and then let us know that and we'll proceed to explain how to check the iPhoto Library package for survivors.