Access hard drive

[carls]

I am a Reunion photographer. We photograph class members at reunions and download the photo to our laptops. When the class members want to see the photos to make an order, we first have to find the laptop the photos are on to show the photo to the classmembers.
(This is what we want to be able to do). We want to be able to load the images from the camera to an external drive (or server) and them be able to show the images to a classmate from any of the loptops (up to 4 laptops). Is this possible? Can we use more than one laptop and access a hard drive to see the images stored on the hard drive? ( we have to be able to access the hard drive from up to four laptop at the same time.
What do we need to purchase to make this possible.

 

[KurrentEweser]

Have all computers networked and have the folders with photos setup for shared access. A wireless router would come in handy for this.

 

[KSoD]

I would think a server would be better served here. Like a WebServer or Web Host. This would make it much easier to upload the photos to the server and access them easily among all the laptops without having to worry about shared access and other such things which can get messed up. But Kurrent and Vanquish both have good points as well.