Markdown doesn't have built in support for image-sizes, so the only real solution is to use a little HTML inside your markdown. Given that, my jekyll-image-size plugin can do the resizing you need without any CSS.
Example:
<!-- template --> {{ /assets/steam-fish-1.jpeg:img?width=250 alt='steam-fish-1' }} <!-- output --> <a href="/assets/steam-fish-1.jpeg" width='250' height='YYY' alt='steam-fish-1'>
(Where YYY is the actual, proportionally scaled height of your image.)
If you need the absolute_url filter:
<!-- template --> <a href={{ "/assets/steam-fish-1.jpeg" | absolute_url }} {{ /assets/steam-fish-1.jpeg:props?width=250 }} alt='steam-fish-1' > <!-- output --> <a href="http://test.com/assets/steam-fish-1.jpeg" width='250' height='YYY' alt='steam-fish-1'>
For rotating your images, would it make sense to just rotate the image file itself?