I cant figure out why the .htaccess file is not being read. I am using XAMPP

Here is the httpd.conf file

DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
<Directory "C:/xampp/htdocs">

    Options None

    AllowOverride All

    Require all granted
</Directory>

I dont want content listing enabled except for one folder called photos. so inside the photos directory inside htdocs- using notepad i created a .htaccess file and included

#Allow the listing of folder content
Options All

This did not work and the error log shows:

Cannot serve directory C:/xampp/htdocs/photos/: No matching DirectoryIndex (home.php,home.html,home.htm,index.php,index.html,index.htm) found, and server-generated directory index forbidden by Options directive

I also added rubbish to the beginning of the access file to see if it would reproduce an error but all it says is 403 forbidden.

Other things i tried was

#Allow the listing of folder content
    Options Indexes

basically, for every folder there should be no content listing except for the photos folder which is why i created a .htaccess file and placed it inside the photo folders. (it must be a .htaccess)

any ideas why this is not working?