open(LOCAL, ">$imgdir/$name.jpg") or print 'error';

Nothing to do with the immediate problem, but this statement in  uploadImage() is problematic: if there is some vague 'error' and the file fails to open, execution will continue (briefly | see Update below) with an undefined | a closed filehandle. See haukex's "open" Best Practices.

Update: I thought that some kind of fatal exception would be thrown in a subsequent statement if the open failed, but not so: execution will continue indefinitely with a closed filehandle, and not even warning messages will be generated if warnings is not in use!