The best way to store your images (or other binary files) is on the filesystem. Every modern web server does a good (or excellent) job of serving up static content. Storing them in a database is by far the worst possible solution. Not only because it’s slow, but also because it complicates database backups: MySQL dumps with binary data don’t compress very well, causing the whole database backup to be slower and larger than needs be.
So please, be sensible. Store your files on a filesystem.