Captions vs. Stories (Patreon)

So, lately, I've been having some issues with the owners of some the pictures I've used. It hasn't been anything major, and I'm not going to go into who, exactly, nor do I wish any ill will towards them, but things they have said have echoed thoughts I'd had myself, in the past.

I've always maintained that the point of this Patreon is for my stories, whether those come in the form of actual stories, or captions. The pictures on the captions themselves are the sort of thing that you can find most anywhere, if you know where to look... I've been collecting them for a long time, but I haven't actually paid for any of them. 

However, the fact that I'm using them, even if I'm adding a caption to them, could, potentially, be seen as me trying to sell them, even if it is just for $1, which is not, at all, my intention. I always try to leave watermarks on, unless the part of the picture they're on would affect the story, and then, if I do remove them, make a note of it, and if I know where photos without watermarks are from, link to them, but it's still an imperfect system.

Theoretically, I could try to secure permission for all the pictures I use, but that would slow things down a ton, especially since I would have to wait to get a lot of them from commissioners first, and then, in some cases with those, and even ones I've had for a long time that I have generic filenames for, I wouldn't know who to ask, or how to get ahold of some people who haven't been active in the community for a while. I could also post the captions here and link to the pictures where they are, but again, for older things, they might not be easy to find elsewhere, and I'd be relying on the owners of the pictures not to move them at any point in the future.

So, I suppose, the question is this: If I were to move away from captions entirely, would you lose interest? 

I'd always want to make sure that everybody who contributes here gets something for their money, and it would be the same amount of content, simply without the pictures attached. 

When writing captions, I always try to have at least one page of story per picture, although it usually winds up being a bit over. So, potentially, if I do this (and that is an if at this point), the $10 tier would be for a one page flash fiction kind of thing, and the $20 tier would be for around 3 pages. That would mean the $50 tier holders would be getting kind of a bad deal, but I could either lower the price on that some, or raise the length of a chapter/story gotten from that to 7 pages, which is around what most of them end up being anyway.

People on the $1 tier would still have access to the same things, which are, basically, what the $10 and $20 tiers commission, plus community captions (or stories, under this) and whatever short things I write on my own, with the longer stories still being for $5 subscribers.

For those who have the higher, commission, tiers, you could still send pictures if you like, since those are a great way to convey the idea of a scene, or a dynamic, that you want to see - a picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. I could possibly still make them into captions that I could send to you privately, and just post the text itself here. Or, for those of you who have issues finding pictures and just have idea you want to see, you wouldn't have to worry about that anymore.

That's just my idea of how things could go... I'm probably not going to be making any changes right away, and certainly not without asking you guys what you think. And, as I said before, I had been thinking about this before anyone approached me about this, so it isn't anybody's fault. I think, potentially, it's a better, safer way to do things, but if it's something you guys hate, then I won't. If you have any other ideas for ways to prevent any possible future issues, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!