Back in 2001 when webhosting was pricy and hard to come by, a dashing hero of the AnandTech Forums wrote a set of scripts to allow for free public picture hosting. With the scripts in hand, he gave out a mighty warcry intended to attract other champions for his cause. One noble warrior stepped up, and provided the server and bandwidth upon which the scripts were installed. The calls for "pics?" continued for a time to be answered with, "Where can I host?" But now there was a solution, and AnandTech flocked to it. Since then, it's just been part of the fun of the forums to contribute to the site's massive collection and browse its latest or most popular images.
The dashing one was, of course, I. The noble warrior was dwell (now Chris). That server was a laptop computer. The bandwidth was dwell's apartment building's T1 connection.