Where did my photos go on my iPhone?

About 8-10 months ago about 800 photos from my iPhone deleted and I did't really worry too much about it because I thought they were being downloaded onto my iCloud. Clearly I was mistaken because today I went onto my laptop, signed into my account and my iCloud photo library was empty. I know when I had those 800 photos I had my "iCloud Photo Library" setting on to upload and store into the iCloud.

iCloud Photo Library is a syncing service. It will upload the photos to iCloud Photo Library and then sync the photos to all devices using iCloud Photo Library. Any changes to your library will update across all synced devices. If you delete photos on one device, they will be deleted everywhere.

It is hard to guess for us, what may have happened for the 800 photos to vanish from your iPhone. Did that happen at the time, when you disabled iCloud on your iPhone?

. I know when I had those 800 photos I had my "iCloud Photo Library" setting on to upload and store into the iCloud. Sometime in the last few months I turned that setting off.

If you used "Optimize Storage" on your iPhone, disabling iCloud Photo Library will have erased the theoptimized photos from your iPhone.

If your photos are still in iCloud, you should be able to see them when you sign into your iCloud account at www.icloud.com and launch the Photos.app there.

Are you sure you weren't using the Photo Stream?

I ask because the Photo Stream now has a limit of 30 days or 1000 images before they are automatically removed.

I ask because the Photo Stream now has a limit of 30 days or 1000 images

It had always a limit of 30 days and max 1000 images in iCloud, but the individual devices may have kept more photos in their stream, space permitting. The photos then will vanish from My Photo Stream, when the Photo Stream is reset on the device, because only the current content of iCloud will download again. But the imported photos will not vanish from the Camera Roll on the iPhone or the library on the Mac, even if My Photo Stream has been reset.

My Photo Stream could be the culprit, if the photos had not been imported from My Photo Stream to the Photos Library, but in Photos on a Mac this importing should be automatic.