My IPhone 5 battery life was significantly reduced by Photos Background activity.

My IPhone 5 battery life is significantly reduced by Photos Background activity. On average, it consumes about 50% of the battery's usage. It began suddenly immediately after upgrading to one of the iOS 8.0 versions (8.3?), and switching from using ICloud to ICloud Drive. I now have to charge my phone every couple of hours. (3 times a day). How do I correct this??? I cannot go back to the regular old iCloud, nor do I want to.

I sincerely hope that this is not some kind of "planned obsolescence cycle" of Apple's, that I've read about a lot on other Apple forums (like osxdaily.com). THANKS!!