Figured I’d ask here as thought self-hosters would care most about looking after their photos.

Couldn’t be more wrong in my case. I host immich so I don’t have to worry about taking care of my photos. I hate taking care of my photos. I hate organizing them, and almost never go back to look at them anyways. Immich just yeets them onto my NAS and I can use visual search to sometimes find what I’m looking for with nearly zero effort from me.

All of that, to answer your question, I just throw them on Immich and they appear on the timeline in roughly the correct spot. I also will often share a link, asking friends and family to upload to my Immich server.