http://manuals.rubyonrails.com/read/chapter/56
this helped me get files into the file system using:
File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/path/to/storage/#{new_filename}.jpg", "wb") do |f| f.write(@params['picture_file'].read) end
then you can access all the files from within your app instead of writing to your local disk
and of course you can change the file extension to take any kind of picture