Matt,
I've experienced similar behavior at times with my iPhone 4. Be cautious about disabling/deleting entire services. They rarely stay dormant for long. Either you'll restart them if prompted or iCloud will make that decision for you. Either way the result is a lot of background syncing and asset rebuilding. iOS does this stuff very quietly. Sometimes the only indication is a stubborn core app. (this goes for iMatch, podcast sync, photo streams).
Two things you may want to consider regarding photos. Keep the camera roll size in check. IOS tends to dump everything into the roll, then freely replicates copies anytime you need one. (This is photos in albums can only be removed and not deleted.) the only surefire way to extract a photo from the roll is by hooking your phone up to a Mac. Open the Image Capture app. Import the photos to a dedicated folder. Make sure the folder is not located in a directory that is monitored by iPhoto/iTunes/et al or they just get scooped up and resynced.
Check out this article at OSXDAILEY.com "Manage Your Own iPhone Photos? Delete iLifeAssetManagement to Recover Lost Disk Space in Mac OS X" They lay out the scenarios, so you can then adapt based upon your use case.
Hope this helps. Keep that Back Up safe if you start tinkering. You'll probably need it.
How is iOS7 treating you?
-Andrew
