I personally enjoy that Lemmy isn’t as popular as Reddit. It feels more home-grown and friendly because it’s not as large. That being said, contributing to and engaging with the content you enjoy is a good start. Finding a niche here can be great and there are tons of interesting communities to contribute to!
I’m not sure if Immich does this but it is a self-hostable Google photos replacement. It does geotagging but I’m not sure if it will break HDR for you. Might be worth while to check out.