I have tried adding required to the repeat group and the questions however, my goal is to require someone to go through a repeat at least one time, however it allows me to skip adding the first group. If I understand repeat-count correctly this is an exact number that does not allow for additional responses beyond that number.
I know I could ask a question with a drop down of how many photos they would like to take and not have 0 be an option but I am trying to avoid that if possible because the user may want to add another group on the fly.
I'm guessing you are using XLSForm to build your form. As far as I know, the only way to require at least one repeat is to edit the form XML after conversion to remove jr:template="" from your repeat.
I'm starting to think we should look into a modification for XLSForm such that jr:template is only added if defaults are specified for group elements. I'm not sure whether this would be difficult or not.