Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

It’s that time of year again!

Ammena Dance Company is once again putting on An Explosion of World Dance and Music (2010 edition!), held at the Yates Memorial Centre in Lethbridge on Saturday March 6. Lethbridge is really a hot bed for multi-cultural events, and this year our show is no exception. In addition to multiple Bellydance pieces, we will also feature Bollywood, Merengue, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and Bhangra (which has been co-choreographed by a legitmate Punjabi Bhangra dancer!), as well as musical performances by local musicians.

Tickets aren’t on sale quite yet, but will be soon at the Yates Ticket Centre.

I did the poster design, and the photo is once again by Jan Tajcnar, who photographed our big show last year!

I’m allowed to do shameless self-promotion for my hobbies on my blog! :)

Please note: Due to my heavy involvement in this show, I will be taking very limited sessions between now and March 15th. If you would like to book a session in that time, please contact me at info @ tanyaplonka.com for availability, or I can schedule you in for March. I am still able to meet up for any wedding consults during this time, so don’t hesitate to ask if you would like to find out more about wedding packages for 2010!

As you can see, I am still catching up on a few things! Back in December the JPS Trio invited all their fans out to Henotic to take part in the filming of their first music video, done by the multi-talented Dan Berdusco of Lethbridge Link. The cameras stayed rolling all night while the crowd danced to to the band’s energetic set of originals and a few funky covers. The band is hoping to get this video onto MuchMusic, so wish them luck! (more…)

This Halloween, Andrew Suderman was gracious enough to let me second-shoot for him for this really unique wedding! Doug and Kristine combined the chilly autumn weather with some excellent Halloween elements, which was right up my alley :)

I had Andrew assist me earlier this year, so it was cool to switch the roles. He’s a super awesome up and coming photographer in town, so make sure you check out his Flickr page!

Doug and Kris started with a “regular” wedding (well, regular but with Halloween decorations) in the German Canadian Club, and then we went outside for family photos. Unfortunately the wind was a chilly 80km/hr that day, so we weren’t able to stay outside for very long! Andrew set up his lights inside, so I wandered around capturing all the neat little details they had arranged in the hall.

After the lunch reception (they had an early wedding), we drove out to Stirling to go to the renown Haunted House! We were instructed that we could take photos inside, as long as they looked “creepy.” I am so glad Andrew had a flashlight in his gear bag so we could focus our cameras on them! And I have to admit, I was a very bad second shooter and totally hijacked that portion of the shoot! ;)

Their second, evening reception saw all the guests return in Halloween costumes. So much fun! (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…)

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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