"Is it a better idea to name images such as keywordhere.gif rather than logo.gif?"

It depends on your motivation. Are you doing it to make the user experience more pleasant, or merely a weak a*s attempt to gain rankings in the SERPS?

"Also, I've read that adding alt text rich in keywords may also help, is this true?"

Again, are you doing it for your site or are you doing it for the search engines?

"Lastly, is there such a thing as keyword spam?"

H*ll yes!

I thought SEO was an all encompassing body that had literally hundreds of elements to it. Is that not the case?

I don't view anything I do onsite as a weak assed attempt at anything so to answer your question, the answer is no.

There are over 100 elements to the algorythm, with over 500 million variations. So yes it is complex.

Keyword stuffing is treated as spamming, so don't do it.That said, with a little thought you can name images for better usability and seo. One thing though,, unless an image is a link, the alt text is totally ignored!

Lets say you have an image of a saab 9000 n your Saab site. Naming it 9000pic.jpg is not really doing much for anyone using a screen reader (which is really what alt images are meant to be, representations in text of the image). So a better alt text would be 'Picture of Saab 9000 CSE Anniversary 2.3 turbo moonstone blue with anniversary alloys and cream two tone doe hide upholstery'. Now that has made the information complete, is a total description of the image, and is also going to help your SEO efforts.

I agree with OWG. You can (normally) quite easily include both ideas in the description.