Rather than use the clipboard you should use Finder's duplicate command in AppleScript to copy files around. Assuming "photos" and "newphotos" are both folders on your desktop you can use something like this to copy the contents of photos to newphotos:
tell application "Finder"
set theFolder to (path to desktop as string) & "photos" as alias
set theItems to items of theFolder
set destinationFolder to (path to desktop as string) & "newphotos" as alias
repeat with aFile in theItems
duplicate aFile to destinationFolder
end repeat
end tell