Good morning epickens00,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!
I understand you are missing some photos that you took recently.
I have not done a back up on my phone. But the phone does it one it's own every night.
I am not sure what you mean by this. If in your iCloud settings you have a backup enabled, then you have a backup of these photos and you can restore your device from the backup if necessary.
How to back up your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
If you take a picture with your iPhone right now, do you see the image in the Photos app?
How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
Manage your iCloud storage
Are were the photos taken a week ago saved directly to your iPhone, or do you have iCloud Photo Library enabled?
iCloud Photo Library
Do these pictures appear in My Photo Stream? Tap Photos > Albums > My Photo Stream.
My Photo Stream
epickens00, please reply to this thread with the additional information requested, and I'll do my best to help you with this!
Take care.