Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

Kristin, James, and little Chase came into Lethbridge today for some family photos just in time for Christmas. I went to high school with these parents, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve last seen them! It’s always neat to see how everyone has grown up since then :)

Chase started out the session like a model, totally at attention and saying, “Cheeeeese!”… then he started acting his age and wanted nothing to do with us, so we had to trick him into a few more photos ;) (more…)

Last week GS Lakie middle school and LA Dance company put on a fantastic dance show, Rush Dance Montage, with all of their students at the Yates Memorial Centre. Music students of the school opened the show with each of their rock bands while the crowd filled the auditorium (I wish my school had had a rock program!), and this was a first performance for many of them but they did so great! They were followed by an hour of super impressive dancing, with dancers ranging in age from teeny tiny (3 or 4) to adults. The show had such diversity, covering hip hop, lyrical, Latin, Afro-Caribbean, contemporary, Irish, etc etc. My favorites were the Bollywood piece (naturally) and the Michael Jackson tribute. There are a ton of talented dancers in this city! I really wish the show had been much longer than an hour! Kristi did such a fantastic job putting this together :) (more…)

Today I went to play in the coulees with Jenni and her yellow dog Bosco (and yay, no wind for once!). Even though Bosco is 4, he has all the energy of a puppy so I really had to chase him or act very quickly to get a lot of these photos! These two are such a cute “mom” and her baby :) (more…)

Again we are going back to August with this one! Michael Warf invited me along to second shoot Jon and Dana’s wedding in scenic Waterton, and I had such an amazing time! We were with them all day, right through to the party. Together with their bridal party they were a TON of fun – most of them knew each other from film school, and well, I like film school kinds of people :)

In keeping with that theme, Michael arranged a photo shoot in the old movie theatre in Waterton, and it couldn’t have been more perfect for those two.

Plus, these two were sooooo crazy in love. Dana’s gorgeous doe eyes were always oozing with adoration; I know “oozing” isn’t a very romantic word, but I can’t think of anything more descriptive of it!

I had trouble narrowing these down because we did so many things throughout the day, so these might take a little while to load :)

First though, a tale of my brush with nature! When I first arrived in Waterton, I had about an hour before I needed to meet Michael and his assistant Brien, so I grabbed a wrap from Subway and found a bench overlooking the lake. The deer in the area are very conditioned to all the tourists, so they graze quite close to humans throughout the town. As I sat there eating my lunch, a group of three does wandered by me, munching on the grass. Soon one turned around and started walking towards me. “It’s getting awfully close!” I thought, assuming it would stop at a certain point… but NO, before I knew what happened I was holding my wrap away from the deer’s grasp while having my cheek nuzzled! After realizing it would not be able to share any honey mustard goodness, it backed off and went back to finding stray leaves. Unfortunately, all the nearby people were too busy gawking at the sight to take a photo of it! You’ll have to take my word for it… I’m like Snow White!

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Alright, now that I am done weddings for a while, I can catch up on a few weddings I second shot on! (Though each time I think I am done, another seems to pop up…) This one was shot with Michael Warf waaaaay back in August in Calgary. We accompanied Frank and Val to Calgary to celebrate their special day… at the Calgary Zoo! Unfortunately the weather was so cold and miserable that day, so our time spent outside was not as pleasant as it could have been, but we made due!
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Though I hadn’t known Deb and Zack for very long (their photographer fell ill, and I met them only the day before their wedding!), I took them immediately and loved working with them. Like most couples, they warned me that they are not good at having their photo taken, and as usual I didn’t believe (and was right!). Deb has such a radiating smile and it was so easy to make her face just light up, and Zack picked up my posing cues almost immediately and started posing himself like a model ;) So easy!

They had an intimate ceremony at the Sandman Hotel, and came back down the aisle to “Sandstorm” (I contained myself and took photos instead of dancing).

Afterwards we used Lethbridge Centre for photos and came across another bridal party having their portraits done there. Our girls joked they should have a West Side Story gang battle – the purples versus the black/reds – but sadly no one broke out in dance… :)

Deb and Zack, thank you for having me at your wedding!

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