so my wife's iphones have always played difficult to get into the photos. I manually transfer her photos to my Windows 10 Pro x64 PC. Have 2 of those. Iphone is 8 Plus. 

It has always given me trouble, some USB ports don't work, some ports work, sometimes the phone disconnects halfway during photo transfers etc.

Sometimes it will not connect until you restart both devices etc, sometimes it connects but won't show you the photos

But today, it just will not see photos. Connects to all computers but no photos showing.

trust my computer is trusted

icloud is enabled but photos are not backed up/deselected

updated itunes

nothing

updated iOS

nothing

hard reset everything

nothing

different cables, tried 4, different USB ports, tried them all!

She did drop the phone once or twice, but that's the only thing I can think of

Maybe this will get her off the iphone to join the dark side - but maybe not

This is getting a bit PITA