iPod Touch 4th Gen stuck in recovery mode.

Hello, and thank you for reading this and any assistance you can render in advance. I have an iPod Touch 4th gen. running on firmware 4.3.1 (I think). The Touch is my lifeline and i use it ALL the time for just about everything. Last night I was trying to access public WiFi at a chain restaurant/bar and was unable to get online. No big deal, butever since then my Touch is stuck at the Apple logo no matter what I do, and occasionally it will flash the white screen, I can get it into recovery mode, but the BIG problem is that I have photos and videos of my infant son on it that are priceless memories that I don't want to lose if at all possible.

Is there ANY way to 'unbrick' or get past the recovery mode so as not to lose my photos and videos ( I could care less about the apps and music). One final problem (as if it wasn't bad enough already right?) is that I haven't synced the Touch in a LONG time because of an old desktop that I had my original Apple account on when I got my 1st. gen Touch some years ago. There are hard drive space problems, etc. but I digress. I just need to know if there is ANY way to recover my photos and videos. I see 'data recovery' software of course but most of that seems to be a crapshoot and I don't know anything about jailbreaking and this device has never been jailbroken.

Help!!!