Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

The results for the Lethbridge Sun Times Best of the Best contest, where residents vote for their favorite businesses, are finally in, and I am proud to announce I received second place for photographers! Thank you so much to everyone who voted and for all the support everyone has given me over the past year. I love what I do, and it is worth all the late nights and lost weekends to be able to do this for a living. THANK YOU!

I wanted to put together a slideshow showcasing my work, and thought this song, which I have been in love with since I heard it a few months ago, was a perfect fit (Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zero, Home). Most of these photos are on my new website, but there are a few in there that hadn’t quite made the cut the first time around :)

Woo hoo, I’ve finally redesigned www.tanyaplonka.com!

Improvements:

• Bigger photos (especially here on the blog!)
• Easier to find information
• Not as much filler
• Photos more recent than 2008!

It was so hard narrowing down photos for the galleries, and was painful to make some of the cuts I did. However, I’m so happy with the final result. I hope you like it!

Hey everyone, it’s the Lethbridge Sun Times Best of the Best contest time again! If you like what I do, head over to the following link and cast your vote:

–> Click here to vote <--

You’ll have to scroll down a bit to see “Best photography studio”.

I would appreciate it so much if you take a moment to do this! Thank you for all the love you all give :)

(And a special thank you to whomever put my name there in the first place.)

p.s. You don’t have to be in Lethbridge to vote!

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.