Q: Moving iPad photos to an external hard drive

I have around 4000+ photos on an iPad Pro from a vacation, which I uploaded from an SD card using an adapter. The photos are spread among 15 or so albums. I want to ultimately get these photos onto an external hard drive. They are currently all backed up in my iCloud Photos, but my only option with iCloud Photos is to download these photos individually, and I don't have time to download 4000+ photos individually.

I would import each album into my Mac Photos app, but my Mac Photos app refuses to recognize any of the albums. No amount of resetting or switching USB ports or re-loading everything corrects the problem.

I tried using iTunes to get at the photos, but they are nowhere to be found.

Ideally I would like to batch download everything from iCloud Photos, but there doesn't seem to be that option.

These all seems needlessly complicated. How can I get photos from my iPad to my hard drive? There should be a way to simply drag and drop, in my opinion.

Thanks~