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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The website I mentioned a few days ago isn’t ready yet, but I realized I never featured Osho Japanese Restaurant when it was done, and I also just launched Nancy Townshend’s website a few days ago!

Osho Japanese Restaurant

I didn’t do any of the photography for this, just the website. This was cool to do because Osho is one of my favorite Lethbridge restaurants!

Nancy Townshend

I worked with Nancy when I did my internship last year at the college, and afterward she contracted me to do her own site.

The poster for this year’s Explosion of World Dance and Music, hosted by Ammena Dance Company, is done! If you haven’t been to this show the last two years, the focus is on belly dancing but there is an eclectic mix of many different dance styles, and even a few musical acts.

Tickets for the show go on sale tomorrow! If you are interested in going, buy your ticket early because they sell out quickly.

I’m going to be dancing on one of those drums shown in the poster, oh boy. I’m also putting up a couple other designs I made that we aren’t using, as well as some shots I took of Lana, all after the cut…

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I am in the middle of a few projects and have been itching to make a blog post, so here are a few teasers of the design projects I have been working on…

An Explosion of World Dance and Music 2009 takes place on March 14, and tickets go on sale February 1…

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A little while ago I mentioned I had big news, and that news is: I am finally launching my own business (officially)!

I will be operating under Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka.

Essentially, I will be offering all the same services I have done all along!
-Portrait photography (individuals, couples, kids, families, bands, etc)
-Wedding photography
-Commercial photography
-Event photography (ie, dance, concerts)
-Website design
-Poster design
-Misc other print design
-Photo restoration
-Image manipulation & retouching

I was planning to hold off on this until my website redesign was finished, but I’m being indecisive so that will be a while yet! I’ll make a big announcement when the new site is up. I’m hoping to have it finished over the Christmas break, since I have no place that currently showcases my design work.

This news comes after Litwin Photography became too much for Hope to handle while she stayed at home with Jaxen, so they are bringing the business back into their home at a much smaller scale and closing the retail space.

I am choosing not have a studio at first, but will shoot anywhere on location. My goal is to keep my overhead down as much as possible, because I want to be able to offer people affordable photos during this bad economic time. I am still more pricey than, say, Sears or a just-turned hobbyist-to-”pro” photographer, but am trying really hard to stay below the costs expected from professional photographers. I come from a family with a limited budget who has always valued photography, so I find it important to allow nearly any family access to gorgeous keepsakes! I have different price points for everyone, from affordable prints to high end books and wall art pieces :)

All of my prices will be listed on my new site, but to give you an idea, sitting fees start at only $40, and my prints at $5!

Okay, /sales pitch.

I have been putting together my samples, and decided to do one of my albums based on the photos I took of Sarah with her horse Santana in 2007. Earlier this year I had looked back at them, and though I loved them more in content and emotion than the new ones of her with Theo (the red dress photos), I thought the quality just wasn’t as good.

Well, it turns out it’s just that my retouching skills have gotten a lot sharper this last year. I worked on the raw files, editing them from scratch, and I am so happy with the results! When it is finalized I will definitely share the album spreads, but for now here is the photo from the inside cover (a picture that didn’t even make my “final cut” the first time around):

Unfortunately getting everything set up, as well as adjusting to my new job at the University, is taking up a lot of my time, so I haven’t been editing personal photos, like the zombie pinups from earlier this year, or some cool Disneyland ones… but in time, I promise I’ll make more updates!

And if you know anyone who needs a wedding photographer for 2009, feel free to send them my way! I am already starting to book up, so it looks to be an exciting year.