Rick, if you've posted pics from PhotoBucket, they must remain at PhotoBucket.
When you post pics in a forum thread, you are merely linking to them from the forum. When the forum software sees an IMG tag, it sees that as an order to go grab the picture from the address immediately following the tag. As soon as the forum sees a /IMG tag, it knows to stop grabbing information.
So, when you try to post a pic here in a thread, the forum software goes to grab a picture and if it no longer exists where you told the forum software to go look for it, the end result is no picture displayed.
As far as leaving pictures at PhotoBucket, that's a non-issue. They don't charge you to store the images, so it's like you are getting free Web space. The space where this forum is stored is nearly $120/annually.
Remember, you do have the option of using the photo gallery, here on this site. We'll store a few pictures for each member at no charge, as well.