exporting numbers 09 to excel with photos in spreadsheet
There are two ways that an image can exist in Numbers.app, to my knowledge:


Within a cell (in a table) - here, the cell has an "Image Fill";
"On top of" the table.


Excel doesn't support option 1.

If you drag an image file into a Numbers spreadsheet, you'll get option 1: the image will be inserted within a cell.

Instead, in Numbers, use the Insert > Choose… menu and select the image file.  You'll then get option 2, which is correctly exported to .xls format in my limited testing.