Darren makes a somewhat good point, hosting here for photos keeps them 'in' the forums in case the external hosting site goes down.
imho and speaking as a pro photographer the images _I_ post are 'mine', and I prefer to put them where If I choose to, I can delete them as I see fit, so I use either photobucket (for woodworking and personal stuff) or Zenfolio for my studio work. It might mean that someday my photos on any given forum might go 'poof', sorry in advance if that happens, but I still reserve the right to control my own images. If they go poof, however, I've got much bigger things to worry about than any given forum's having a busted image link.