Transferring Photos from iPhone to Hard Drive

I don't keep photos on my computer for storage space reasons, and the current group of photos I'm trying to transfer to my hard drive actually exceeds the available space on my Macbook-- so I need to directly transfer them across, rather than import them to my computer first. I know I've done it before, but couldn't recall if it was an "export" or "copy/paste" situation. This time when I plugged in my phone and hard drive, however, both options ("export" and "copy") were greyed out. I could select photos and import them, but no option of redirecting the import to anywhere other than the Photos app on my Mac. Help?