Downloading 50gb of photos and videos from iCloud to Windows PC

Hello,

I'm taking a 3 week trip to Europe and my 50gb iCloud storage space is full. I need to clear that out before I go so I can take lots of photos and videos without any concern for storage capacity.

I have downloaded the iCloud software onto my Windows PC and that allows me to view iCloud as if it were a folder on my Windows PC, and from there I'm able to select batches or all files and copy paste them wherever I'd like, but when doing so it seems to remove any important date information regarding when the files were uploaded which is needed when searching for a specific file based on a specific time. So say I wanted to view photos from Halloween 2007, all the dates on all the files now represent the date I copied them from iCloud, and not the date they were photographed/synced with iCloud.

Is there anything I can do short of creating 12 months of folders per year and manually downloading each month into each corresponding folder on my PC?