iPhone lost contacts, PHOTOs, etc. =( help??

Yesterday after having my iphone 4 for 2 years, I finally decided to upgrade. I had only backed up my iphone once, in March of 2012. I plugged in my iphone and applied the update. It then went into recovery mode (usb cord and itunes logo on black screen). I went to an AT&T store and received zero help. I wanted to go back and not go forward with the update. However, I was told my only option was to move forward with the restore to factory settings process. I did just that and now all my photos and contacts from March 2012 to July 2013 are erased.

Is there any possibility of retrieving this data ever? I called a data recovery company and they said something about cloning the flash drive and copying the images, at 50/50 chance for $200.

Is this possible or no? Any suggestions or should I just move on?

Thank you in advance for the help/support.

Read the following article which explains how to recover data which has been deleted from your iPhone. LINK

And for heaven's sake if this stuff is so important to you, BACK IT UP MORE OFTEN.

Normally what you did would not have caused any problems, but obviously something went wrong during the update process. This is what backups are for.