You should quit using externally referenced images; it's stealing bandwidth from the hosts. Also, you should optimize your images for the size you display them as. You don't need a 1mb image file when you're displaying a thumbnail. Additionally, it sounds like you're using too many images on one page.

Nope. The images are not on your site and as such, are out of your control. Which is why it's not a good idea to use anything that references a third party - you're at their mercy.

But honestly - this won't matter. You will find yourself banned in the search engines. Holy Keyword spam, Batman!

My site www.eviewvillage.com is taking too long to load. It has numerous externally referenced images. Is there a way to optimize images that are referenced externally? Any suggestions for what I could do/try to fix this problem? I've tried adding W3 Total Cache and WP Smush.It plugins but it doesn't seem to help.