Too many photos on iPhone for iPhoto to handle?

Hi,

My Iphone 5 is telling me that I do not have enough room to take any addional photos.

I figured that I would plug the iphone in to my macbook pro and import them to iphoto. I plug the phone in via usb and open Iphoto with an unlocked iphone, but iphoto never moves past "loading". I googled the situation and I tried to use Image Capture instead, however, Image Capture doesnt recoignize any photos either. FYI, I use photo Stream too. Photo stream is working. I also tried resting the phone and the computer.

Questions are:

1. What am I doing wrong? Why cant I import photos to my iphoto?

2. What should I do to quickly remove the photos (so that I can take more pics), while ensuring that I wont loose any?

Please help and Thank you!