I would just like to move some iphoto albums to the hard drive. How do I do that?

If you mean move iPhotos to an external hard drive to save space,

see > https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517

If you mean copy some somewhere else, please explain in more detail, what you are wanting to do.

I have this same question as well, I want to move photos from iCloud to my Mac's hard drive (not an external hard drive)