How to export photos including meta data from iPhone

The date you see in Finder, a file management system, is the date the file was created, obviously today's date. But the image creation date is nonetheless stored in the metadata of the picture.

I just saved a picture from my iPad to iCloud Drive (easier than an external drive, for me), and the picture from 2005 had today's date in Finder, of course, but here is a look at the metadata:

Here you can see today's date for the File Modification Date.

But here:

you can see that the Image Create Date was Dec 21, 2005. Both dates are part of the file, but this Image Create Date is the date that is shown in Photos when I re-import it. Photos is an image management system rather than a file manager, and so it shows the date you're expecting-- just as other image systems will do.

You can use apps like the free ExifTool Reader to see the metadata. (I used another app, GraphicConverter.)

By the way, you can use GraphicConverter ($40) in Finder to copy the Image Date to the File Date, if you like.

Many social media sites like Facebook, WhatsApp etc nuke internal metadata. File dates are very fragile and are often updated when moving images around. I often take note of "keeper" images' received or other date inside such social media apps, transfer them to the Mac and insert there my best guess internal metadata date and location to them. For the very best images I might ask for the original image because often also the resolution and other pixel data might have beed deteriorated in those 3rd party apps and mailing systems.

...I recently had to move such an old archived image about 2 years forwards when my daughter kept nagging "I did not yet have that kind of hair style as this picture claims"...

I'd try different workflows and see what best preserves any date that might be the correct one: internal metadata DateTimeOriginal, as well as numerous other usually less important internal metadata dates (you can check them with GraphicConverter, A Better Finder Rename, exiftool etc). File creation or modification dates are fragile but routing the images via iCloud might now better preserve them. Try also Image Capture or directly to Photos via USB, and also via different AirDrop settings. Do not delete the images from the phone until you are sure there is no important date related info there. Different iOS and macOS versions might produce different results so I am sorry not to be able to give a definitive answer.