On that issue that you mentioned about all the images loading at the same time, keep in mind that the attribute "loading" only applies to the <img> tag and also on <iframe> but not on div's.
And by the look of the design, the only images that should be lazy loaded are the ones from the 3rd row downwards. You can increase the spacing between the cards and also between the text to achieve that effect.
If you want to learn more about that attribute check out this link https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Performance/Lazy_loading