You need to get a range of values with matching records and then find a matching record within that range.
Something like this:-
SELECT r1.id
FROM `table` AS r1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT RAND( ) * ( MAX( id ) - MIN( id ) ) + MIN( id ) AS id
FROM `table`
WHERE `picture` IS NOT NULL
) AS r2
ON r1.id >= r2.id
WHERE `picture` IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY r1.id ASC
LIMIT 1
However for any hope of efficiency you need an index on the field it is checking (ie, picture
in your example)
Just an explanation of how this works.
The sub select finds a random id from the table which is between the min and max ids for records for a picture. This random id may or may not be for a picture.
The resulting id from this sub select is joined back against the main table, but using >= and with a WHERE clause specifying that the record is a picture record. Hence it joins against all picture records where the id is greater than or equal to the random id. The highest random id will be the one for the picture record with the highest id, so it will always find a record (if there are any picture records). The ORDER BY / LIMIT is then used to bring back that single id.
Note that there is an obvious flaw to this, but most of the time it will be irrelevant. The record retrieved may not be entirely random. The picture with the lowest id is unlikely to be returned (will only be returned if the RAND() returns exactly 0), but if this is important this is easy enough to fix by rounding the resulting random id. The other flaw is that if the ids are not vaguely equally distributed in the full range of ids then some will be returned more often than others. For example, take the situation where the first 1000 ids were pictures, then no more until the last (33 millionth) record. The random id could be any of those 33 million, but unless it is less than or equal to 1000 then it will be the 33 millionth record that will be returned.