The first thing you'll need is a place to 'host' your photos.
I like photobucket, overall:
http://photobucket.com/
In the upper right corner of that page is a box, with 'username' and other info. At the bottom of that box is the sign-up button. Click 'Sign Up!' and create an account. It's free
The thing I dislike about photobucket is the layout doesn't stay the same. By that I mean that depending on what you do on the site, the buttons for using the features of the site aren't always in the same place, and it can appear confusing. But if you bookmark it, you can always simply return to the main page, and once you're logged in for your visit, clicking your bookmark for the home page will bring you back to the main screen, but you'll still be logged in
So if you get 'lost' on the site, all you need to do is click your bookmark for the main page, and then click 'my home' on the blue bar at the top of the main page
Once you're at 'my home', there is a big green button labeled 'Upload Images and Videos'
Clicking that will prompt a new window to open. The window allows you to browse your PC for the photo you want to put in your photobucket account. I usually put the photos I want to upload on my desktop for the sake of ease, but you can browse to any folder on your PC via that window
You select the photo, and it will be uploaded. Then you save the image on the screen that asks if you want to. This is how you 'host' a photo online, and then The Firing Line will recognize the photograph
Each photo in your photobucket album will show a 'thumbnail' or preview image of the photo. Clicking it will show the whole photo.
To insert an image here, hover your mouse cursor over the thumbnail of the photo you wish to add to a message. A series of options will appear. Copy and paste the whole mess of characters next to the last choice, called "IMG Code". Copy the code from photobucket, and paste it into a message here on the forums. If I did this here it would insert a photo so I will purposefully mess that up by substituting the number '1' for the first 'I', so you can see what an example of the whole code looks like:
[1MG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v441/Chuck_Older/coltholster.jpg[/IMG]
That's the 'path' that the hosted image is coming from online- the web address of photobucket, the name of the album (Chuck Older was and is my aviation hero so I used his name for my album name), then the photo name. Doing it 'the right way' results in this:
if you need copy and paste help (not everyone knows how and I wasn't born with the knowledge myself), That's easy too and I can show you quickly, or another member can, I'm sure
Now you're dangerous- you can post a huge photo that will be so large it will be un-viewable all at once on your monitor! But windows has a program that will resize an image for you, and photobucket will actually do that for you too
In photobucket, click on a thumbnail. The photo will appear. Hover your mouse cursor over the photo, and you'll see a series of options appear at the top of the photo. One will be 'resize', and placing the mouse cursor on the word 'resize' will bring up still more options- presets for resizing, as well as 'more options'