photonotebook as a photo manager fits within the “media (eg, sound, photo, video) players/viewers (rationale: the software is very often used to import/preview/playback files on external devices)” part of the Process for auto-connections for removable-media. As such this should be suitable to be granted, once the publisher can be vetted as the official upstream of the snap (this appears to be the case but this should be verified for completeness).
As such, +1 from me for auto-connect of removable-media for photonotebook assuming vetting is done.
For optical-drive can you please clarify if this is requesting read or write permission?