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.