Is this an efficient use of UIImage?-Collection of common programming errors

Well, it depends on how you’re getting the UIImage.

Are you using +[UIImage imageNamed:] each time you create a new Person object? If so, UIKit caches the image and returns references to a single copy in memory. You retain it to make sure it stays loaded, then release it when you’re done referencing it, but only one UIImage object is created in memory.

If, on the other hand, you’re calling +[UIImage initWithData:] or [[UIImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:] you’re creating a new copy in memory each time (and you probably need to stop that 🙂