Well... In the end, you probably do want to back things up in a way that detaches the photos from iCloud sync issues. The best solution I have found is to use

Well... In the end, you probably do want to back things up in a way that detaches the photos from iCloud sync issues. The best solution I have found is to use Photos on the Mac to pull down all of your photos and then the osxphotos python project to export them with full metadata and tagging to the directory of your choice which you back up using other means.