I have more than 5GB of iCloud used, and I pay for the 50GB plan, I don't really want to keep paying it. I don't want to lose my pictures th?

I have more than 5GB of iCloud used, and I pay for the 50GB plan, I don't really want to keep paying it. I don't want to lose my pictures that I keep on my shared photo stream though.

If I stop paying for iCloud will my shared photo stream pics/vids still always be available (forever)? Why do so, w videos and pictures not load on shared photo stream, does apple delete them? Where'd they go? I like google pictures to store my photos, but it's not HD. I have iPhone 6+

When you cancel your iCloud storage, Apple give you a reasonable amount of time to download your data so that you can store it locally or reupload it to another Cloud storage provider.

Check the Apple website for yourself, but I think you get thirty days grace. After that the account gets deleted along with all your data.
Hosting costs money, and if you're not paying for it Apple will no longer provide it.

In reality, for legal reasons they archive your data for a few years but it's not in any form you would recognise nor have free access to.