More efficient way of establishing fluid galleries

I can't imagine this question hasn't been posted before, but I can't really find a satisfactory answer on the posts I have found that raise this.

I have a portfolio on my page. I use the Portfolio collection page for this. Here I just want to add single items with a single gallery. Within the page, if I want to add a fluid engine gallery, the only option I can find to do that is to add an "Images" block from a template that already includes a bunch of images in that gallery. Is there really no way of making a gallery in the fluid engine that isn't already beset with template images that has to be manually deleted (albeit via batch delete) before you can upload what you actually want to be in there?