Changing Gallery URL - 301 Redirects

I use PhotoPlog and currently my gallery URLs are in the format of /gallery/*. I began thinking that it might be cleverer to have it /pictures/* since my site is about singers and people would probably rather search for "Pictures of { Insert singer's name }" than something like "{ Insert singer's name } Gallery".

Should I just go ahead and change the structure or should I apply custom 301 redirects to preserve indexed URLs? If so, how?

If you will move your gallery to the new folder, it's recommended to 301 redirect old URLs by creating .htaccess in old gallery folder:

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/pictures/$1 [L,R=301]

Ok, I think I've done it right. Google results with links to my gallery still work. So there's nothing I need to worry about?
http://malesopranos.com

Yes, looks good