Based on various reviews/testing done on the current crop of MacBook Pros with the M1 Pro and M1 Max, even the base model is sufficient for most workflows. If you increase to 64GB of RAM I believe you'll have a machine that will have a good long useful life.Ah yes, you're right. Phew! ?
If you do "only" photography is should be sufficient. I got the M1 Max 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU with 64 GB RAM because I also work with Final Cut Pro and sometimes even with Lightroom and Final Cut Pro simultaneously and I noticed on my 2017 iMac 5K I used around 50 GB of RAM+Swap. Also both CPU and GPU load were on the limit depending in wich application I was working. I suppose I will get at the limit of the M1 Max too but the price jump for the M1 Ultra is simply too much for me since I'm not a professional photo- or videographer.
PS: As a little appetiser my black Magic Mouse and my white small Magic Keyboard should arrive tomorrow. ?
At my business we are processing thousands of images per week, and often will do huge batch exports of several hundred images at a time; in that case the minor increases in performance from the Ultra will pay for themselves in saved time, but if I were buying just for personal use the regular base model with 64GB.