Syncing photos hangs

When I connect my ipad to my MBP, it automatically starts to sync. However, it gets to "importing photos" and stays there. It has the moving barber pole, but will never end (I've waited hours and eventually X out of it.) I only have about 1200 photos in my iphoto library, so it is not because of overloading the system. I have the newest versions of OSX, itunes, IOS, etc.Anybody have any suggestions?