Hi Scott,
I really understand your frustration on using MC as a photo managing program. I am currently looking for the best way to use it as such. In fact I don't really need MC since I already use another photo managing program but I always comes back to MC as, as you said, it would be nice to use the same program (and same habits and tricks) for both my music and photo collections.
I first tried using custom fields to tag my pictures (people, occasions, etc..) but I think it's not the way to go for pictures. Although this is good with music, it does not apply well to pictures because it ends up with a lot of typing. I 'm now using playlists. With the properties pane opened in the playlist section it makes it easier to categorize photos in a way similar to Photoshop album, imatch or PSP album.
The main problem I found is not really with EXIF but with the date/time system. It has been reported several time on the forum. Unlike Music, photos are mainly organized by date/time taken not by artist / title. For example it should be possible to set view schemes based on month/day/time photo was taken.
At the moment I'm trying to analyze in which way MC could be improved by comparing the managing features of Photoshop Album, Imatch, PSP album and MC on the same database,
will be back later with more informations @ the moment, I must go to work
Christian