Yeah, I find doing in-game photography is a great excuse to spend more time in a videogame world I enjoy, once I'm technically done with it. And going back to Elden Ring at this stage has really given me a fresh appreciation for how breathtakingly gorgeous it is.
(And yeah, I did a similar Outer Wilds project back in 2022 [Caution: contains game-ruining spoilers for anyone who hasn't played Outer Wilds]:
Link )
I think Elden Ring is definitely the most approachable FromSoft game so far; it does require a degree of learning, and there's a real mindset of "progress until you run into a roadblock, then if you get frustrated, there's a thousand other things to explore" that it helps to cultivate. That said, I think the core design is superb, the dungeons iterate in wildly imaginative ways, and - as FromSoft's first open world game - it avoids almost all the pitfalls of boilerplate open worlds.