The first thing you notice about Diane Vasquez, owner of Angel Diane Photography in La Verne, Calif., is she makes eye contact. Look into her deep caramel-colored eyes, and she immediately puts you at ease. That’s a great quality to have when you’re the subject, and she’s focusing one of her Canon digital cameras on you to create that perfect candid moment.
“Our home is filled with beautiful photographs taken of our family by Angel,” said clients Rusty and Melissa Johnson. “Despite the fact our children are young and do not sit still, Angel uses her creative talents to capture the perfect shot.’ She demonstrates patience, especially when working with children.”
Capturing the moment is what Angel does best. Photos to her become conversation pieces that connect generations. She most deeply felt that emotional bond when her father, two weeks shy of her high school graduation, had passed away. He had always been the family photographer.
“I remember him having really nice equipment, and he always took candids of all the family because no one would pose for him,” she reflected. With passing years, these candid photos became irreplaceable treasures. They also revealed to her a career path she would follow to create similar memories and moments for other families.
“If you don’t recall memories, you lose them,” Angel said over coffee at Starbucks in La Verne. “So I’m really passionate about documenting a time in period in people’s lives.”
Weddings especially have become one of her favorite photographic interests, following “couples at the pinnacle” of their relationship. “You get the best seat in the house,” she added. “When I do weddings, I become emotionally and spiritually involved. It’s not work.”
Even the most demanding “bridezilla” will melt in front of her lens.
On Nov. 8, Angel will turn her photographic skills on pets at the Palace Pet Salon in La Verne, just in time for the holiday season. The amazingly inexpensive sitting fee, which includes a choice of one 8×10 or two 5x7s along with four wallet-size photos, is only $23.95.
Angel’s normal sitting fee is $75, another “recession special” that includes an hour photo session, an 8×10 enlargement, two 5x7s, eight wallets, plus other images posted on line for viewing and purchase options. “Key moments in a family’s life are too precious not to preserve, so I’m trying to make the price as affordable and economical as possible,” Angel said. “That’s true for their pets, too.”
With kids and pets, Angels knows the secret of taking quality photos is getting them comfortable in their environment. She’ll shadow a child in a park, letting her subject naturally interact with the surroundings until the perfect moment reveals itself.
In La Verne, some of her favorite settings are Heritage Park and an area behind Las Flores Park. “Point the camera in the right direction, and people think we spent a day on a ranch,” she said, sharing one of her secrets. Outside La Verne, she likes shooting at Crystal Cove along the coast and downtown Los Angeles, where she has befriended many homeless people whose lives she believes are not so different from our own, were it not for “circumstances” that cast them apart from society’s mainsteam.
Again, it’s her empathy for her subjects, whether she following them on Los Angeles’s mean streets or to the altar in La Verne, that has helped make Angel a remarkable photographer.
But the proof is not in the telling but in the photographs themselves. So please take a further look at:
http://angeldphoto.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Angel-Diane-Photography
For more information, you can reach Diane at (866) 636-7973.
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