iPhone 6 11.0.3 Not Sync with Photos

Hi Everyone. Ive just plugged my iPhone 6 iOS 11.0.3 with lightning cable into my MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012) running El Capitan 10.11.6 (16GB RAM, Samsung SSD 500gb drive)- it now no longer automatically opens Photos for syncing iPhone photos. Even when I click on Photos the iPhone icon no longer shows up on the right side bar. Just last week before a trip I manually backed iPhone 6 iOS 11.0.3 to iTunes and Photos. I don't use iCloud back up for photos as it proves a bit of a problem with slow internet. I live in the Philippines and we have slow and unstable internet.

What could be wrong? Never had this issue before. I just want to know if anyone has any issues with this and a fix before I do anything drastic. Thank you in advance for any suggestion.

I do understand Mac eco system as I have been using OS X for more than 10 years. But as of late some there are some issues that I am not up to date with.