"Move" command gone wrong (lost data)

[Keith Santangelo]

Phone:
Sprint Samsung Galaxy S4 SPH-L720, Android 4.4.2
Build: KOT49H.L720PUFNAE

I recently took a vacation, and had roughly 300 photos on my internal SD card. I decided to "Move" (delete from Internal, copy to SD) to my microSD card for better sharing on my tablet.

After transfer completed, I opened the new folder on my phone, and they were all the black lightning bolt error icon. I turned off my phone, put the SD card into my tablet and they were completely gone, not even the error icons. I removed the SD card and kept it unplugged for the rest of my vacation to prevent more damage.

I attempted recovery with Recuva by mounting my SD card as a drive, nothing more recent than 6/30/14 was able to be recovered (photos were taken July 10th - 15th)

I've looked into rooting my phone to use a Recuva sort of app on my internal storage but am just so confused, distraught at all my options, what damage I could further cause and if I can even restore my lost photos. What can I do? Where do I even start?

Thank you.