I, too, am excited about communities. Personally, it looks to be a great way to uplift the minnows because there is a better chance of whales interacting with them since the gathering is around a common interest.
The problem with Steemit at the moment is that it is one big stream of articles. As you mentioned, the tags need to be manually handled and many post under tags that are popular.
I might have to rekindle my interest in photography.