I just backed up my ipad and iphone photos to icloud but when i go to icloud.com to ensure all was backed up properly it says i have nothing backed up?

Where at https://www.icloud.com/ are you seeing that it says you have nothing backed up? iCloud.com will not display the contents of a backup. On your phone you can go to Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage to see the amount of space occupied at iCloud by each device backed up. The backup can only be used to do a full restore to an iOS device. The Photos app at iCloud.com doesn't display photo backups. It will display photos from iCloud Photo Library. iCloud Photo Library FAQ - Apple Support