Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

It took some planning and a crew of people to get the artistic vision perfect, and I was happy with the results of turning Cassandra into her own version of Blind Mag from the movie Repo. This is a bizarre, wonderful dark rock opera, so if you’re into quirky things like that, be sure to check it out! I was hoping to do some evening light painting with this shoot, but the temperature dropped quite considerably and our fingers went pretty numb, so we stuck primarily with strobes.

Sara (who is new to the photo scene; check out her link below!) was a huge help with moving my lights around and manning the flashlight so I could get the focus right, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. This was also the first shoot I had Bonnie do makeup for, and I hope there will be many more because that girl is talented! And if the zombie makeup is any indication of what those two can do, you shouldn’t be too surprised with this costume.

The talented cast…
Hair: Cayley Moncrieff, Chatters @ Park Place
Makeup: Bonnie Ferguson
Assistant: Sara Giséle
Costume: Cassandra Pollock & Jeremy Nordstrom

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Cassandra contacted me a while ago to do a photoshoot inspired by the character Blind Mag from the movie Repo, and things finally came together to make this happen! We had a great team on this and I have a few more to post, but won’t be able to get them online until I get back from WPPI. Stay tuned!

Hair: Cayley Moncrieff, Chatters @ Park Place
Makeup: Bonnie Ferguson
Assistant: Sara Giséle
Costume: Cassandra Pollock & Jeremy Nordstrom

A couple months ago Cassandra came to me with a fantastic jungle gym she had found. You know how they are making all the playgrounds “safer” these days by ripping out the fun wooden ones and replacing them with “soft” plastic? Well, this one somehow made it through the approval process despite that!

Because of the cold weather we hadn’t been able to use it for a shoot until now, and even so we ended up with numb hands and barely finished before the local wind warning that evening kicked in!

Cassandra used to be a gymnast when she was younger, so she was the perfect model for this shoot. (more…)

On Sunday Michael and I did another collaborative shoot with the lovely Elaina, who you might remember from The Hotel Arts shoot last month. Elaina is always a dream to work with, so we called on her to model a few gorgeous pieces from a Mckenzie Couture line. Mckenzie is a brilliant Lethbridge fashion designer and lent us some really colorful and funky work she has done.

We took to the old brewery in Inglewood in Calgary for our photos, and couldn’t have asked for a better day, or a richer location. Aside from the dirtiness and scary pigeons flying out of holes, the one location had such a good variety of backgrounds and textures that we never changed locations the whole afternoon. Usually Michael and I end up with really different frames when we share a shoot, but this time we were both feeling the brewery the same way, and came up with some really similar shots even though we didn’t look at each other’s cameras and reposed Elaina whenever we switched. The lone tree you see at the end of this post just had to be framed that way!

We were assisted by Michael’s friend Satnam, as well as Elaina’s crew, all of whom were good sports as we tiptoed admist the pigeon poop :)

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Okay, I think I am cursed when I work with Kelsie, because it snows every time! January, I can understand, but within an hour of when we started what we thought would be a warm April shoot, Lethbridge got a ridiculous amount of snow! Luckily we were able to finish our shoot inside, but were not too thrilled going back outside in our summery clothes and shoes :P

Kelsie’s hair stylist friend Courtney did an amazing cut and dye on her, and we did this shoot for Courtney’s portfolio. Courtney also doubled as an excellent lighting assistant throughout the evening! I don’t need to explain how great Kelsie is because you can see for yourself :)

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Finally, I can show a little more than my Hotel Arts teaser from a week ago!

We started the shoot by doing some promo photos for the Hotel’s lounge, Raw Bar, and then took to the gorgeous lobby areas to do fashion photography. The hotel was also gracious enough to lend us a room, so we had a chance to do boudoir work as well. I would have loved a two day shoot out of this as I ran out of time and was only able to extensively work with one of the models… At least it leaves more ideas for the next time!

There’s no full nudity in the photos, but if you’ll get in trouble looking at girls in corsets or barely covered in showers except for steam on the windows when you’re at work, make sure you only check these out when you’re in private!

I’d also like to point out I love doing boudoir work, so if you are interested, please contact me! I’ve been doing it for a while, but only recently with models, so I haven’t been able to show it off before these last few shoots!

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