Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

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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While at the Estate Party at Photoshop World in Boston, Michael and I met Jodi, a graphic designer and model from Illinois, and luckily she was up for doing a photo shoot with us the next day! We chose to do a boudoir shoot with her at the hotel to show off all her great ink; this girl knows how to choose tattoo artists. I’d also like to point out that she is approaching 50, and look at her! I hope I age that well!

She brought along a wonderful selection of wigs for the shoot, but her real hawk was pretty fun too :)

Thanks so much for shooting with us Jodi, and thanks to Ian for assisting with lighting!

I kept this entry safe-for-work, so feel free to click:
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Yesterday I took part in a great collaborative fashion shoot at the Hotel Arts in downtown Calgary. Our team consisted of three photographers, three assistants, five models, two makeup artists, and one hair stylist/salon – as well as the Hotel management and staff themselves. Throughout the evening we broke off into our teams and worked with the gorgeous models, making use of the beautiful space in the hotel. It felt really rushed (I feel like I barely shot anything!) but I was definitely pleased with the results and with the great collaboration we had going on.

Special thanks to Michael Warf for organizing the bulk of this, Torin Segstro for being my lighting assistant, the Hotel Arts for having us, and to all the models (Mikyuki, Melissa, Elaina, Rydell, and Lacey)!

I’ll hopefully share more of the shots later, but for now here are my favorites:

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Here is a quick peak at the shoots I did while in Boston!

I have not taken a self-portrait I have been happy with in years, which has been nagging at me since it is ALL I used to do. My last night in the hotel proved to be productive!