Leaving this question here so other people can see it.
What do you suggest for situations where I want the photo mode to be active but I also want to use the camera for another transform?
(some people may miss p_photo_mode_active(time). I figure someone might open this page looking for that function)
If you look at the changelog you'll notice that transform has been removed. This is because it didn't do what it was actually supposed to do.
The new clipboard copy outputs the camera transform so that it does the animation first, then reactivates photo_mode_active.
Without a suitable backdoor to the camera, the only way for me to control it is to apply the transform manually.
camera:
# animation
photo_mode_active