G'day.

Is there SEO value in hot linked images?

That is: when Googlebot follows a link to an image on a page, does he find his way to the text on that page and in doing so, find relevancy in the link, or does he find himself at a dead end at the image?

Of course, in this case, there's no relevancy between this SR page and the page on which this image is displayed.

But if it was hot linked from a photography forum: http://www.photoforum.com.au/showthread.php?t=7574 and hot linked to a photography site: http://www.southimage.net/digital-images/ with some relevant text content on each page, would Googlebot recognize it as a valuable link?