Photo first sink second, no problem. Sink first and there's nothing to take a picture of so the mission fails.
There's one photo recon mission at the north end of Manila Bay where you're supposed to take pictures of a couple of escort carriers, anchored in an extremely improbable location - why would they go all the way up there when there's deeper water and dock facilities at the south end of the bay? There IS an antisubmarine net but you can fire over it if you set the torps for shallow depth, in fact it's far enough from the targets you can surface and scrape over it (with the most godawful noise ever) then submerge again for a close approach.
Main problem with that career mission is like all career missions it comes up at random, including career start. The question of why they would go all the way up there to anchor is compounded by the more serious question of why there are two Japanese ships in Manila Bay when the US still occupies the Philippines, and how did they get past the fortress at Corregidor? One playtest of the Gone Asiatic career mod I got that mission and failed because US forces sank both carriers before I could get up there to snap pictures, which required a lot of screwing around to move the starting locations and paths of all the US forces just in case it happened at career start. Silly, but there are a lot of things in SH4 that are sillier. If the devs had thought about it there would be some kind of check on WHEN a mission should be rejected and another one chosen if the time frame is all wrong for it.