I am trying to import a pipe delimited text file that was exported from one
SQL Server into another. The file looks layout is essentially this.

Col1 Name
Col2 Picture

DDL
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[stage] (
[col1] VARCHAR(50) NULL,
[col2] IMAGE NULL
)

Some entries do not have an associated picture, when I attempt to import
records I get the following error - Insert error, column 2 ('picture',
DBTYPE_BYTES), status 2: Error converting value. Invalid character value for
cast specification.

If the data type of column 2 is changed from IMAGE to TEXT, the import works
fine. Is there any workaround that will allow me to use an IMAGE type? Can I
safely use TEXT?