I water damaged my iPhone and want to get my photos back. My iPhone was ios7 but my icloud synced to my work ipad on ios8. Is it now impossible to view any data from ios7 on icloud drive? Any help to get my photos back please!

I damaged my iphone 5s and want to get my photos back. It was submerged in water for a good five minutes (and is now in rice) but I'm pretty sure it's dead.

I really would like to get my photos back. I wasn't plugging in my iphone and backing up, I just assumed it did it automatically because about a week ago I had a message saying automatic backups were stopping as my icloud was full.

My work ipad is running on ios8 (as of a few days ago!) but my iphone was on ios7 as I didnt have enough space to install the update. This means that my icloud is now icloud drive and I cannot view the stuff from my ios7 device without upgrading it to ios8. Trouble is, I cant upgrade it because it's in a rice bowl.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Any idea if I will be able to access my photos on icloud at all? I'm not very hopeful for my phone working again and downloading things that way!

Thanks!