The reason for the initial small deposit is to ensure that the seed was backed up correctly to the steel plate (not writing down the wrong seed) and also that the restore from that backup was for the correct seed (not a mistake when reading the seed or entering it into the new wallet during the restore). Without that deposit, the on-chain balance for the correct wallet and an incorrectly restored wallet would both be zero. The small unique balance makes it easy to confirm the whole workflow of backing up and restoring worked correctly. Splitting the metal seed backup across multiple geographic locations is good advice because if one location gets compromised, the attacker only gets part of the seed. The restore is from the metal backup seed to ensure it’s both readable and correct. Your suggestion about taking a PHOTO of the metal seed backup is CRAZY - most people have phones that sync photos to cloud storage where they could be SUBPOENAED or HACKED and the seed and wallet balance STOLEN. Also - (although unlikely for most people) the phone could already be compromised and steal the seed as soon as that photo is taken.