I've been told when you add a picture to your website from Flickr (with the proper attributes) you can receive a valuable link in the "add your comment" section...
Yes like others have said Flickr is no-follow so you get nothing from it but it doesn't hurt to place links for traffic.
I agree, sources are now drying up and it is just making it harder for new webmasters. Although traffic from referral sites is always generally good, trying to rank in search engines is more important for reliably new traffic. In the end, search engine traffic always wins the majority of the traffic.