New to MacOS; I want to remove all iPhone photos from MacBook

I found too many answers in Google and Bing which made me very nervous. Too many are years old and I suspect out of date.

I don't want to loose the photos on my iPhone but don't want them on my MacBook. I have a MacBook Air 13 (M3) Sequoia 15.5 24Gb RAM. I disabled iCloud sync in Photos on the MacBook but they are still on it.

I would like to know where go to read a reliable source on how the iCloud sharing between Mac and iPhone is handled. The Apple help seems vague and biased toward using iCloud. Or I am just to new to understand its language.

Happy Trails