Any given USB memorystick should be able to handle several 100.000 writes / reads.
A harddrive would be a better choice, but I dont think you will encounter problems with the USB Stick.
You can either do as you write - place the pics in /tmp - or you can get yourselves a harddrive instead of the USB Memory device :-)
...or you can just use the memory stick, and hope it works. My guess is that you wont see problems for as longs as you are using it. Hardware tend to outdate before it breaks these days :-)
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive#Weaknesses