How to obtain photo data/metadata after being picked in PHPickerViewController?

If you check the NSItemProvider from PHPickerResult, you will see that it has "suggestedName" property. This will be your file name.

I don't have any additional information about raw image data and creation date, sorry.

As mentioned above you can get the suggested name for the file name.
If you want the raw image data, you can load the file representation or the data respresentation.

For some strange reason, when I use 'file representation' loading, the app does not have the proper permissions to work on the file at the returned URL. I had to copy the file to a temp location and work on the copied URL. Not sure if this is intentional or an oversight bug. Below is the sort of code I needed to use:

NSString *allFiles = @"public.item";
_ _block PHPickerResult *blockResult = result;

_ _block NSMutableArray <NSURL *>*blockFileURLArray = [NSMutableArray array];

 for (PHPickerResult *result in results){

[result.itemProvider loadFileRepresentationForTypeIdentifier: allFiles
                                                   completionHandler:^(NSURL * Nullable url,
                                                                       NSError * Nullable error) {
            if (error) {
                    // TODO
                    // show alert

                NSLog(@"error %@", error);

            } else {

                    // for some reason, I cannot access the url for uploading
                    // need to copy the file to a temp location

                NSString *filename = url.lastPathComponent;

                NSString *path = [NSString temporaryPathByUsingFileName: [filename stringByDeletingPathExtension]
                                                          pathExtension: filename.pathExtension];

                NSURL *copyURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: path];

                NSError *copyError;

                [NSFileManager.defaultManager copyItemAtURL: url
                                                      toURL: copyURL
                                                      error: &copyError];

                if (copyError) {
                    NSLog(@"%@ copyError %@", self, error);
                } else {

// can now do stuff to the file at copyURL
// store it in the files array

                    [blockFileURLArray addObject: copyURL];

                }

            }
}

// do stuff on the gathered files in blockFileURLArray

Is the error only happening when running in the Simulator or also on a device?

I am also trying to get the creation date and the location of where the photo was taken. We were able to do this with access to the PHAsset. Is there a way to get this information using the PHPickerViewController?

You should be able to access the image's metadata using ImageIO.
Specifically look at CGImageSourceCopyPropertiesAtIndex(..)