Cannot import an album from icloud photos into LRC on desktop

I use LRC for all my editing. However, I also have many photos taken casually on my iphone which are kept in icloud and arranged in albums and allocated keywords. I want to import specific photos (i.e. one of the complete albums already created in Mac photos) to LRC. I have found it surprisingly difficult to find an answer to this. I can connect my phone to the Mac but there are no photos on the phone: they are all in the cloud. I can drag a single photo onto the LRC icon, but that offers only the opportunity to select from the thousands of photos in icloud: it does not see the album I have created in photos. When I click import in LRC, it does not see the Mac photos, or Mac photos albums. I do not use the LRC app for my phone, nor the LR app for phone. I only use LRC on my desktop and the phone and icloud photos for casual shooting.