Help with Android Nexus 5 cell phone crash

I was looking at it - and it went blank.

It's turned on twice since then:

1. It started after I got a new phone while I tried to transfer the data between the two phones. I tried to start up the old phone with one last try, and it did! But it took about 5 minutes to boot up, like in slow motion. Once I had my "desktop" back I plugged it in (although it had lots of battery left.) When I came back it was bricked again.

2. I'm now randomly trying to start it a few times a day. One day the screen jumps open with the "Android Guy" and a bunch of text that was thin and kinda pixilated. It actually startled me and I took my fingers off the power and lower sound button and it went black. This was after I had replaced the battery.

I have about 75 photos on this camera that I would love to recover. Somehow my photo-cloud backup was turned off about the middle of last year. All of the pics I want are after that.

Anyone have ideas of (increasingly destructive methods) of trying to wring something out of the phone?

While the photos are valuable, the $700-1300 price from DriveSavers to recover them is just not worth it. 

Been a while but research booting into recovery mode and using ADB to connect to it.

I assume they weren't backed up to Google Photos?

In reply to Stampie :

I would think they did automatically. I know mine backed up to a gallery associated with my Gmail...

Ms. Stapler had one of these and it was faulty RAM on the motherboard.  Unfortunately there wasn't anything that could be done.

Phone won't boot up, so I can't talk to it with software like ADB.

Photos were being backed up to Google, but somehow feature was turned off lately.

I'm sure it's hardware, like red_stapler wrote.  A few times a day I walk by and try to start it - whenever I get tired of doing that I guess I'll toss the phone.