City Folk was released in November 2008 (about a week before Black Friday), so I have a theory that they had to trim a few features rather than delay the game into 2009 and miss out on the 2008 holiday shopping season. Especially since Nintendo already didn't have much to release for the holidays that year. I mean, Wii Music was basically all they had.
But yeah, I really miss not having the photos in ACCF.
True. Even though City Folk is similar to Wild World in a lot of ways, it also brought back some things from the GameCube game that were absent from Wild World. Like Halloween, the harvest festival, Christmas Eve with Jingle, the house structure (no side/back rooms, but the basement returned), cliffs/ramps, etc.