I have all my images hosted on
www.1and1.com, which is also where I have my web pages and other non-image files. This costs about $10/month. I have several domain names, registered at
www.mydomain.com, and they are each about $10-$15/year. By doing this, I maintain permanent email addresses such as paul@example.com, which redirects emails to whatever ISP I may have (currently xfinity/comcast but previously Verizon). And my images are also accessible using my domains, so when I changed from Dreamhost to 1and1, I just transferred everything and set my CNAME DNS records to point to the new host URL. For most technical forum images I use enginuitysystems.com, but I also have muttleydog.com for my pets, pstech-inc.com for business, and peschoen.com as well as pauleschoen.com for personal stuff.
I use MSPaint to edit my raw 4000x3000 images to 800x600 for reduced storage space and faster loading on forums, and I store them as well as my full-size images locally and backed up externally.
The only problem with my use of my own (shared) server for images in posts, is that they will all disappear if I stop paying for my domain names and web host. That's why it may be better to use the forum to upload images.
