Question: What are the experiences in building a photo oriented site in EE?

There are some really nice plugins out there, like Channel Images or Assets, but they are all oriented around "uploading as you go" and not for serving images from some kind of back-end (like slideshowpro director or similar).
For myself and fellow photographers the input would be extremly useful around how others might have solved this.

Answer: 
If you like SSP Director (as do I, very slick interface, I'd love to see something like that come to the EE control panel), then maybe keep an eye on Koken: <http://koken.me/> 

Something new developed by the same developer as SSP with a public beta coming soon.
EE doesn't have a real document/asset management addon, although one could certainly be built out of existing bits. I would start with Channel Images, because its directory structure really lends itself toward reuse of assets (it gives every asset a separate subdirectory). 

Alternatively you could start with a separate DMS/AMS, and build some sort of integration bridge, as Natetronn suggested above with SSP Director.