Changing photos to alias - Snow Leopard issue or human error?

Hi,

I really wondered if anybody could help me, I've looked online and can't find anyone with a similar problem!

Basically, I use the same camera with the same 16GB memory card every day for my blog as well as personal photos and always upload them to my computer for editing. I don't keep a backup of them, because as soon as they are on my blog I don't need them anymore.

Today when I plugged my camera in, three week's worth of photos disappeared without a trace. I checked them before plugging them in and they were all there... I noticed a file with the name "å€ < „4. ␀€" has appeared and when I click on "Get Info" it tells me that the file is an alias. I'm not very good with computers etc so I didn't even know these alias files existed until today. There is no "original" on the info for the alias. I'm not sure how it got there or what its use is.

Does anybody have any idea what could have caused this? Could it be a software issue or could it be something I have done? I've been doing the same thing for months with this camera and haven't had any problems. My laptop likes to eject the device without warning and then tells me it could cause damage to the device. Could it be that?

I'm at a loss now really because I've lost all of my holiday photos and pictures of my son. I'd love to find my photos somehow if that's possible. If I can't, I'd like to try and make sure this doesn't happen again!

Thanks in advance!

By the way my laptop is a MacBook Air purchased in 2010 running Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.8) if that helps.