Lethbridge Portrait & Wedding Photography & Design by Tanya Plonka

When Katie and Christian asked me to photograph their wedding, I was elated. In my early concert going days, I loved to watch Christian and best man Steven’s band Atrophy Manuscript, but with the band no longer together, I hardly ever run into the guys anymore. It was neat after all this time to see Christian getting married (and to such a wonderful, gorgeous girl!).

They had a small evening ceremony at the Galt Museum, so we did the photos beforehand just before the sun went down. The light was gorgeous and we couldn’t have asked for a warmer, more peaceful day. The sun set just as they walked down the aisle. Everything they arranged was beautiful, and I’m so happy they chose the time of day that they did.

Thank you for sharing your day with me! (more…)

As I mentioned in the previous entry, when doing the photos for the last issue of ArtsBridge I was asked to shoot within the theme of the interaction between the environment, arts, and science, and immediately the big windmills throughout Southern Alberta came to mind. I dragged Marie out towards Cardston just before sunset and made her repeatedly jump for me :)

Though the publication was in black and white, the colors that evening were so rich and saturated, so I’m excited to show the color versions of the images.

Thank you Marie for being such an awesome model! (more…)

The weather may have forced us inside, but I had a great time taking graduation photos with Zack and Amanda, as well as Zack’s mom and dad. Zack has exceptional taste, as is evident by his white tux, and Amanda’s tastes are quite outstanding as well with the choice of her gorgeous sparkley blue dress. What a good looking couple :) (more…)

Sara’s mom Michelle was in town visiting last weekend so Sara asked me to capture some long overdue mother/daughter photos of the two of them, along with Sara’s sweet little dog Goldie. These photos were a challenge for Sara, because she is normally on the other side of the camera! However, she’s totally photogenic (even though she doesn’t think so), so I think she needs to spend more time in front of the lens too :) These girls were so easy to get beaming smiles out of, and I was glad I picked such a colorful location for photos when they had picked such gorgeous rich colors for their clothes. (more…)

Last year when I went to Vegas to attend WPPI, I was standing in line waiting for Jerry Ghionis’ platform class and started talking to the girl in front of me. What a small world it was; she was from Calgary! I hadn’t seen Stephanie since meeting her then, but we agreed we’d definitely get together in Vegas again this year (don’t worry, I’ll have a post coming about that soon enough!).

This year found her with a baby in her belly, so we decided some Vegas maternity photos were in order! The Vegas strip has a million fantastic photo locations that always get the gears in my head going, but I just couldn’t make it past the hallway to the convention center at MGM! The colorful walls called to me…

Stephanie was willing to strip down in front of all the other photographers walking by, and it was fun stopping for everyone who was chimping the back of my camera to see what we were up to! It was so much fun and challenging working in a totally different environment for maternity photos; usually I prefer to use a lot of natural light and give the photos more of a soft feel, but if you’ve been in any of the casinos in Vegas, you know they are very dark and very dramatic! My mom acted as my lighting assistant with my single strobe (I wanted to travel light – no pun intended), which made the shoot much easier, seeing as how I didn’t have a light stand with me ;)

Check out what a cutie Steph is… (more…)

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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