California and VidCon

So this is months and months overdue, but my life these past 6 months has been rather crazy. Between breaking my camera, moving, school, ect. I haven't found time to edit these photos from my amazing trip last July with my friend Paige and her mom.
The morning of July 27th was a hectic one. We arrived at the airport around 9am and I remember trying to check into the airport. Everything was completely amazing until we realized that our flight had been rescheduled to 6am, but we weren't informed about it. I'll keep it short and say it took us around 3 hours to find a way to California. Our tickets had been cancelled by an idiot who worked for Expedia and we were stranded. But, we managed to get on a train to Newark, New Jersey and get a flight to California there. Our flight from Newark left at 6pm, when we were originally supposed to head out for the west at 10am.

We landed at LAX around 11 I think. (Don't trust my judgement on time from 6 months ago). We then hopped on a shuttle to get our rental car and then to In n Out (obviously). It took us another hour or so to drive to Huntington Beach and get to our hotel. We checked in at 1 in the morning and then crashed as soon as we got to our room.
The next morning Paige and her mom went to the Surfing competition bright and early while I stayed and slept in. I met them down there and then we walked back to the hotel to hang out by the pool.

Later that evening, Paige and I went down to the beach to shoot photos. I tried shooting some conceptual stuff, but it ended up not working out. While we were shooting we got a call from Paige's mom to come back to the hotel immediately. We packed up and headed back, realizing cop cars were everywhere. Near the hotel were police officers and flares all over the street. We got into the hotel and back to Paige's mom, and she told us that riots had broken out on Main Street, right where Paige and I had been shooting.
We turned on the news and apparently people had smashed windows, tipped over porta-potties, and started fires in the streets.
The next few days in Huntington were relaxing and very low key, and I don't have any pictures from them. We went out to dinner, hung out at the hotel, went exploring, shopping, and I met up with some family for lunch.
Then, on our last day we packed up and headed for Anaheim for VidCon.
The first day was hectic and exciting. Paige and I ended up cutting to the front (oops) and we became friends with a few other people in the line. When the doors opened we fast walked to see Charlie McDonnell and were first in line. We met him (Sadly no pictures from that) and then bought a few things upstairs before going and waiting for John and Hank's meetup on the third floor.

Those we the only good photos I got of Hank and John, sadly. This was the point in time when my 50mm lens was just total shit and kept popping out and being a total asshole and wouldn't cooperate. I mostly took video of this meetup though, because they kept being so funny and awesome.

I remember they talked about Canadian pennies, John's books, Esther, Vlogbrothers, future VidCons, and a bunch of other random things. John actually ran around and showed everyone a picture of Alice, his newborn daughter at the time.
After they were done everyone was running up and talking to them and I decided to run up and get a picture with John. It was really hard, because there were a billion people around and the table was elevated a couple of feet, but I got a really awkward and blurry picture of us together and I'm proud of myself for doing it. He was even looking at the camera. (Even if half of my face was cut off).
Then we went downstairs and got in line for Dan and Phil's signing. By the time we got down there, the line had actually been capped. I knew we were going to have a big problem, especially since Dan and Phil were Paige's main reasons for coming to VidCon. I immediately thought to myself, "Shit, I gotta fix this." And so we went up to a certain part of the line and asked a group of girls if we could cut in line with them. They reluctantly agreed and everything ended up being okay. We waited in that line for about 2 hours or so before meeting Dan and Phil.

I got basically 0 photos out of the signing, mostly because I trusted the girls to get pictures of Paige and I with them, and with the state of my lens, I knew not to expect much.

Then Paige and I decided to sit and watch the KIA show. Which was basically just a bunch of acts of youtubers being funny or singing or performing skits.

(Yes, that's Rebecca Black. She wasn't actually that bad at singing live. I was kind of impressed.)

After the KIA show, Paige and I didn't have anything else to do, so we went out to the plaza to listen to more of the performers and see all of the food trucks and lanterns.

And then after we listened to music and ate and hung out for a bit we went back to our hotel for a couple of hours before heading back for the main music concert at night.

Here's a video of Hank that I took performing one of my favorite songs of his, Accio Deathly Hallows. Please ignore my horrendous singing in the background. I was really happy and excited and couldn't even think straight. It's especially bad at 2:17 if anyone cares to watch it for that long.

Other than Hank, the only person that performed that I knew was Christina Grimmie, which I thought was cool because back in middle school I would watch her singing videos on Youtube all the time. We left after that because it got late. We went to bed and woke up early again for John and Hank's early signing the next day.

I actually don't have any pictures from Hank and John's signing for whatever reason. I was probably too busy freaking out at Paige or talking to some of our new friends that we made in line. I swear on my life that I had photos from it, but there aren't any on my camera so I suppose not.

But we were in a pretty good place in line and we met John and Hank after only maybe an hour of waiting in line. I was so nervous to meet and talk to John, because he happens to be one of my favorite young adult authors and I think he's an incredible human being. He complimented my dress and signed my copy of Looking for Alaska. Him and Hank both laughed really hard at my "passion" on my VidCon pass. It was 'airplane food', which was supposed to be a joke because I don't think anyone really likes airplane food. It kind of sucks. I remember Hank said, "AIRPLANE FOOD?! That's a weird passion." And he continued to sign my pass with his name and a large Hanklerfish.  

Then after we met John and Hank we got in line to meet Kingsley just for kicks. We bought some merch later and then made our way through a couple of other meet and greets and then the second and final KIA show.

 This man wholeheartedly frightened me and I'm 106% positive he inducted a group of Vidconners into a cult when he performed.

Earlier in the KIA show John and Hank announced that someone had lost their macbook somewhere in the convention center and that people should be on the lookout for it. About halfway through the show John and Hank came out again and said that it had been found and John proceeded to be happy and excited and adorable about the whole situation.

After more cuteness and a few other talks from youtubers, they had their finale show for Vidcon. It was this entire skit where WheezyWaiter accidentally put rat poison into John and Hank's coffee which ended up killing them. He had to round up all the other youtubers from VidCon to come help him revive them.

If you're interested in watching the skit here it is. Paige and I were in the second row for it!

So the next day we woke up at 10 and headed out to Disney for our final VidCon day. The entire population of VidCon was at Disney that day and we actually almost took over the park. At 5pm (I think) everyone who attended Vidcon gathered at Sleeping Beauty's castle and took a group photo. It was one of the funnest moments of my life so far, being surrounded by so many awesome and amazing people.

The rest of the trip was just hanging out, beach hopping, and visiting places in Hollywood. Like the famous Amoeba Music store, the American Horror Story house from season 1, and the bench from 500 Days of Summer. (Well, we tried to see the bench from 500 Days of Summer. the miniature park its in was fenced off for whatever reason. It was a real bummer, but we could see it from the street.) 

Here are the final photos I got that made it into my 52 weeks project from the trip.

New York and Connecticut

A week or so ago, my mom and I sat down in the kitchen for one of our late night conversations. We do this fairly often, just sit down and talk for a couple of hours about who knows what. This time our conversation subjected to 9/11. She told me where she was, where I was, and what the entire experience was like; how deathly quiet it was for such a long time after. We talked and talked about it. Eventually my dad walked in and my mom wanted to change the subject because my dad gets really riled up when 9/11 gets talked about. He's the type of person that doesn't move on so easily, but I wanted to hear what he had to say. Knowing that my dad is one of the most talkative people on the planet, I prepared myself for a very long one sided conversation. Unexpectedly, he didn't talk for long (mostly because it was twelve in the morning), but he did say where he was and he voiced his opinion of the tragedy now.

That night led up to Friday. We were invited to my Aunt and Uncle's house (technically they're just long-time family friends) and we decided to take a detour into the city to see the 9/11 memorial. 

It was weird to see everyone taking pictures and not really paying attention to anyone else. 

I stood at one of the empty sides and took a picture of everyone.

I also took a panorama at one side of the South Pool. The editing isn't perfect, but I didn't really try all that hard.

When we were just about dead from heat exhaustion we got our car and drove the rest of the way to Connecticut. I had a bit of a headache so I listened to Lana Del Rey and fell asleep. We got there around 7 and we ate dinner, caught fireflies, played badminton, and then watched Forest Gump for the remainder of the night.

We went to the beach on Saturday. It was hot and humid and a very uncomfortable day for me since I don't have the ability to just jump in the ocean and cool off. We sat on the docks for a bit, and when I got too hot I went up to a shaded area and sat and read one of my summer reading books.

One of the lifeguards ended up striking conversation with me about my book. He asked me what I was reading and I flashed him the cover of the book and said it was Stephen King's memoir. It was funny watching him get excited about it. He proclaimed Stephen King to be the king of all authors and I didn't disagree. He asked me if I had read any of his other books, I said no, but that I had watched the film for It, The Shining, and The Mist. He told me to read The Last Stand, I think it was called, and that was kind of the end of our conversation, because he had lives to monitor and I had a book to read.

Skylar and I then explored underneath the docks and I took some photos of her. I didn't take too many because my camera was on the brink of death from not being charged.

I let my camera charge for the rest of the day, but I made sure to ask my mom if we could go back to the beach around sunset so I could get nice pictures and take my 52 weeks photo. We ate dinner and had a rather hilarious conversation about spanking and deathly hot peppers and how they should instead be called suicide peppers, because my six year old cousin doesn't understand why anyone would want to eat anything so hot. Then my uncle broke out into song and we all got packed up to go to the beach again.

My dad was yelling at me from the paddle board to get a picture of him going into the sunset.

This was my 52 week photo that I got with Skylar! I stood on the dock and made her submerge herself in the water. She's probably one of my favorite people to photograph. She's a great model and doesn't need all that much direction. She takes it more seriously than some of the people I've photographed from my high school, which is pretty phenomenal.

 My aunt's foolproof way to protect against the bugs that were eating us alive.

We got home from the beach around 9:30 at night and we all changed into pajamas, made popcorn and watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It wasn't necessarily appropriate for my 6 year old cousin, but it was funny when he asked what a pot brownie was and in the end it was fine. Everyone loved it. Even my aunt said to me Sunday morning that she was still thinking about how good it was, which made me happy. I told her to read the book because it's even better.
Sunday we went out onto their boat for some fun! We ended up anchoring by this cool little island and everyone swam and I took some pictures.

This was the island that we anchored next to! It was so big in person. I was staring at it for a while when my uncle and my cousin Bryce swam over to it. I asked my dad if he would swim my camera over there, and he got frustrated and asked me if it was worth losing my camera over (if it got wet). I immediately said yes. We put it in a ziplock bag and he paddled over to the island with a boogie board and I swam over with my tripod. I was reluctant to get in the water, but the drive of taking photos on that beautiful island was worth it. (Plus it was really close to the boat)When I got on the island I realized I couldn't take a self portrait without my white dress, so I swam back with the boogie board and got it. Everyone on the boat was laughing at me, I was kind of laughing too.

The island explorers! *photoshops self into photo*

The view of our boat from the island.

Shane, my cousin, who was very absent during my time in Connecticut. I guess he's around the age where he thinks he's too cool for me. He spent most of his time with friends or on his xbox.

This was the final image I got while on the island. I'm super pleased with it, mostly because it's my first successful self portrait (including my face) that I've taken in a really long time.