jsh7
For animations I just used Animated (https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/animated.html) and LayoutAnimation (https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/layoutanimation...) -- the latter makes things so easy I'll probably end up overusing it.
One resource I looked at was https://github.com/Thinkmill/react-conf-app -- but your f8app looks even better than that! I like going through the package.json of other RN apps to learn about new tools. Some of my favorite packages so far are react-native-code-push, react-native-google-analytics-bridge, react-native-image-picker, react-native-smart-splash-screen, react-native-vector-icons, and redux-persist.
Regarding the photos -- for this MVP, I made it a point to not build any server whatsoever. So for now, all pictures are stored on the device's file system. For this I use https://github.com/marcshilling/react-native-image-picker to take/choose the photos and then https://github.com/johanneslumpe/react-native-fs to manage them in the application's storage.