I'm glad this is being brought up.
This is happening with all my auctions also. I'm somewhat paranoid about uptime for pics, so I check mine rather often. I use my own template and noticed the huge gap right away.
My clan of <br>'s comes right after my photos and before my description image.
I started making sure that when making the listing, I delete all spaces after my description. That also causes gaps.
I have to go in and revise every auction through ebay after its launched, which does become tedious after the third one, but my pics are always there. I haven't had some of the problems I've read others having so, it's tolerable, though annoying.
I also noticed that it generally happens when I use my own templates. When I pick an Auctiva template, everything's okay.
I hope this is something that can be a simple fix via Auctiva or is it a code issue with MY templates?