Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

Without further ado, the Henotic Restaurant site is now live for your viewing pleasure. Jason and Adam, the owners, wanted a Flash website… I don’t normally do Flash, so I grabbed a nice template and changed it up to make it their own. I took all of the photographs you see on the site.

www.henotic.ca

Since this place opened in December in the old Firehall, it has been my favorite restaurant in town. The owners are super friendly and make you feel like family, it’s a place where you can dress up OR dress down, the price is reasonable, and you can customize your dish; you pay for the meat, veggies, and potatoes separately, so you are able to customize what sides you get with your dishes, if you even want sides. As the picky eater I am, this freedom is amazing. And speaking of being a picky eater, if I like them that is saying a lot! (My favorite dish is the pork tenderloin, and my favorite side is definitely the homemade perogies).

Another cool thing is that the restaurant is decorated with work from local artists (including yours truly!). If you ask, anything is available for purchase.

They’ve just recently opened the upstairs lounge (formerly the Red Room in the La Bella Note days) – now The Green Couch / Blue Couch Lounge. I checked it out for the first time on Saturday, and it was a cool venue. I mean “cool” as in “neat,” because that small space in a punk show had us all sweating pretty hardcore! Also for all you old TnG’ers, Harlan is the bartender there; what more reason do you need to go?

A few of the images after the cut…
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On Sunday I got to partake in one of the most exciting shoots I’ve ever done! A group of photographers made up of Lethbridge folk and Calgary Strobists got together with the U of L swimming team, a group of models, a fashion designer (Caitlin Power), a makeup artist, and a scuba diver (Chris) for what can only be described as epic. Michael Warf, Kevin Logan, Cody Belter, and I split off to do head shots of the swimmers while the other photogs set up for the fashion shoot, and then we all headed to the dive take window to take part. All the models and swim team must really be commended for the great work they did… their jobs were not easy!

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Lindsey and Jeremy are expecting their first baby, and wanted to get some photos done before the baby is scheduled to arrive in just under a few weeks. They are such a cute couple, not to mention really fun… we threw in quite a few silly shots (which I am not posting here, as I don’t know how Jeremy feels about having his belly on the internet), and made sure to include their first “baby” Marley the dog in a couple photos.

One last blog for the evening!

New Years was really special this year because our good friend Andrew Scott was down for a few weeks from Japan. Since he’s been teaching English there, we barely get to see him anymore, and we (or at least I) really miss his crass sense of humor. I am huuugely looking forward to shooting his wedding with Julie this July, but it seems so far away! (I can’t imagine what it’s like for Julie being apart for so long!)

On New Years Eve, he got the boys from the Turncoats back together for an awesome gig at the Slice that sold out several days prior (that hardly ever happens here). Everyone was up front, singing along, like the past year and an ocean hadn’t kept all us fans away from the band.

Opening were the Smokin’ Pistols

Then the lovely Shaela Miller

And the Turncoats!

Paul singing “Roxanne” (Police)… and Paul never sings. It was fantastic!

(You can view more of these at my other site)

Andrew had a really busy week recording, playing, and spending time with family (and Julie), and sadly I am always very busy too, so only caught one of his solo shows in that time… However, I am grateful for that extra time with him, because not everyone was so lucky! (Poor Dino was out of town on a gig and only really saw Andrew the one day). This solo show was at Mocha Cabana, a small coffee house / cafe I love going to downtown. It was a really quiet show and had a nice vibe. Andrew was there more as “background music” but a few of us came specifically to hear him play, and helped him out with “If I Had A Million Dollars,” which he hadn’t really played before but took by request.

1. I couldn’t be with the Johnpaul Smith Band this weekend in Banff due to photoshoots and my day job, and
2. I have a moment of free time to catch up on the last of my personal photos from 2008 (sorry Kelsey, yours are soon!), so…

Here are photos of the Johnpaul Smith Band back on January 30th at Slice!

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WPPI 2009 is so very soon. I can’t believe I am going to Vegas in one week already. Time really flies, and I don’t feel ready at all!

Because I’m getting really buzzed about the Convention and Tradeshow, I thought I’d re-post the blog I made about WPPI 2008 (for some reason I only put it on the Litwin Photography blog and not my own).
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In March Sarah and I flew down to Vegas for our first ever WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) Convention and Tradeshow, leaving the Litwins back in Lethbridge to look after Jaxen.

We arrived a few days early and had the weekend to play around, but I was eagerly awaiting the tradeshow so I could pick up my new 40D (among other goodies).

At the opening reception we got a feel of how big the convention really was – over 20,000 photographers were in attendance!

Jesh de Rox in the bottom left corner… I suspected it was him but hadn’t actually seen him before, so I played shy :P

The Young Guns Show was one of my favorite parts of the convention, featuring some awesome photographers all under 30. I was excited that Mike Larson came ready to do a demo. Last summer we saw this video of Mike’s infamous camera toss, and I was pretty stoked to see it in real life!
(Here’s a link to the video of him in action)

You can see how daring (or terrifying!) it is even from where we were sitting in the back. (That object at the top of the photo is the camera, if you couldn’t tell.)

The Tradeshow took up a ton of time, and I STILL could have spent an extra day there!

(photo by Sarah)

Here is Sarah standing on the new Olympus camera. I tried to talk her into Canon, but to no avail.

At the tradeshow, I ran into familiar faces: Mark from de Jourdan’s with his wife Kristina! I never had time to arrange a meetup with them before leaving, so it was quite miraculous to run into them among the thousands of photographers who were there.

Sarah and I both saw some amazing speakers, but my favorite times were when we went out to the strip to try my new camera. We quickly learnt that when you have a camera and a model in Vegas at night, you get a lot of people who think they should be in your photos! Sarah was usually the model, but I took a few turns in front of the camera and even Sarah couldn’t help but admit Canon was great.

We barely slept while we were there but we had a great time, and I’m excited to go back again next year!
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Here are a few more pictures that weren’t in the original entry after the cut…
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