Very nice, a lot of great points. Here’s some things I would say about photographs…
Photos in a 1:1 ratio work best across Niantic games. Very wide or very tall photos may get cropped in unpredictable places or end up with a blurry or stretched shot depending on the mood of the Niantic pixies that day. Leave some margin between the wayspot and the edge of the picture if you can.
CLEAN YOUR LENS. No, seriously, give it a wipe. Quite a few times I’ve thought I’ve had a really good photo and it’s just got nasty fingerprint smears on it.
Pictures are better with the sun behind you, but you also want to avoid visible shadows. If you can’t manage that, change your angle to make sure that the sun isn’t directly in front of you. Sometimes photos look better from ground level, sometimes better on tiptoes… experiment.
Some days the weather is great and you can get the perfect photo, some times it’s horrible or a bit dark. In these cases, take a normal photo and then work at it with the filters available on your photo, such as the brightness, contrast or saturation. You can then submit an existing photo in-game with better clarity. Don’t add a colour cast to favour your faction though.
Recognisable people, licence plates or anything that might make you the submitter identifiable are a no-no. Make sure that your image isn’t titled, if possible show the entire wayspot. You can crop the photo to remove elements you don’t want (but keep it close to the 1:1 ratio), blur elements such as faces or licence plates or in more extreme circumstances use AI to remove people wandering about.
Never add elements to your photos, don’t misrepresent the wayspot by editing it. Don’t use third party images, Google StreetView or Bing Streetside images. I’ve yet to see an AI-generated image for a Wayspot but I suppose it’s only a matter of time.