Understanding 照相 and 照片 I am having some confusion about 照相 and 照片. In my Chinese lesson they introduced them:

照片
Zhào piàn
(noun) photo


照相
Zhào xiàng
(verb) to take a picture

They also showed this example:

我照了几百张照片。
I took several hundreds of photos.

Question:
Is the first 照 of the example the short of 照相? Though 照相照片 (take a picture picture) sounds redundant...
Or 照照片 is just another way to express 照相? This also seems strange to me as 照 is duplicated.

I tried to understand the words by the characters (from Yabla):

照: to illuminate, to reflect
片: slice, film
相: appearance, portrait, picture

This confuses me because both 片 and 相 have similar meanings.
I would say that 照相 is a noun, and should be interpreted as the action to take a picture: 我們去照相 （We go to take pictures.）In this context, you can use 拍照 in lieu of 照相。And it can be separated as a verb and a noun: 我拍了几张照 or 我照了几张相。
To summarize:

照片 = (noun) photo
照相、拍照 = (noun) the action to take pictures
我照了几张相、我拍了几张照

照、拍 = (verb) to take a picture
相、照 = (noun) photo



Furthermore, when the context is clear enough (i.e. talking about taking pictures), you can use independently 照/拍 as a verb:

你照/拍了嗎？ = 你拍照/照相了嗎？

Beware that 照/拍 alone have different meanings, that's why the context should be clear enough to use them alone.