Though if you have a large number of photos you want to transfer then you may have to pay Google for sufficient storage (especially if you want to maintain the highest quality). And not everyone wants to give Google a copy of their entire photo library. So I understand preferring to do your own backups.
One thing you could try: enable the "developer options" menu, look in there for a "default usb configuration" setting and set it to file transfer. That would deal with any problem of the option not showing up in notifications. Don't mess with anything else you find in there unless you know what you are doing!
To enable developer options you need to find the "About" or "About phone" section in the system Settings, choose "software information", find the "build number" and tap that repeatedly until it tells you that you are now a developer (or maybe that developer mode is enabled - they change these things occasionally). Google seem to think this is cute...
If that doesn't work then there's always the 2 stage approach: connect a usb flash drive to the phone, use a file explorer app to copy your images to that, eject it and plug it into your computer. If your computer has a USB-C socket you can use a USB-C drive. If not then you need a USB A to C connector (also known as a USB OTG adapter, but make sure it's USB C rather than microUSB) so that you can plug a USB-A drive into the phone.