You keep confirming that you are not familiar with the entrepreneurial lawyers who take copyright cases on a contingent fee basis. The photographer will have little financial risk if one of those lawyers will take the case.

It may be that OP is judgment proof, but you can’t tell OP that the expense of suing could protect OP. You are correct that photographer would be in bad shape after hiring a lawyer that charges by the hour and who passes all the expenses to the photographer. But there are contingent-fee lawyers advertising to the community of professional photographers. Those lawyers spend their own time and money prosecuting cases, so they have incentives to fight asymmetrically. Again, if OP has no money, that could be helpful. It is not helpful to OP to assure that the cost of prosecuting a case against OP is prohibitively high.