I can confirm that at a real Apple Store I've had genius bar folks take photos of everything also. Seems to be Apple policy these days, if they feel like it, to more easily blame the customer.
Doesn't always happen though, and sometimes it helps - e.g. I received a "repaired" watch that had new dents in it and used the photos to show that. Of course, they then said my watch was missing a tiny microphone mesh I'd never seen before and still demanded an AppleCare repair fee from me. I paid, because it wasn't much in the long run, but I'm a bit annoyed at how much Apple has changed lately.
A battery replacement took 8 days to ship back to the store (almost 14 days total) when they could have done it in-store while I waited, but the system said "no, it must be shipped in to be replaced" with no reason given.