Is the facegen you made for yourself saved in fg_files folder and is it saved in the First_Last.fg format? As for clearing facegens taking precedence over photos, clear the facegens from the cache per this wiki note at the bottom of the entry.
https://wiki.ootpdevelopments.com/in...ustom_Facegens
Clearing the cache forces the game to look anew for a file to load and if you now have photos as the preference, it should look there going forward. It wasn't even looking when it had a facegen already loaded in the cache. This clearing will force it to look.