Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

One day when we were driving home from a wedding in Waterton, I finally really noticed the old abandoned gas station on the highway. I have driven past it many times before, but there was something about this trip that made it finally connect in my brain. I’m always on the lookout for new ideas in my post apocalypse series. Seeing the gas station right after the Kenow Wildfires made everything click into place!

It’s a bit of a drive to take a model out there, so I took a chance and asked Cam. He was still sporting his mohawk which would be PERFECT for something like this. Cam hates having his photo taken so I was expecting something like, “Are you crazy?” or a firm no. Imagine my surprise when he agreed!

We patiently waited for the snow in Waterton to melt, and the little that was left behind looks like ashes. Everything worked so well together. The burned trees were a haunting but perfect setting for the atmosphere we wanted. The only props we brought along are the ones Cam is wearing or holding, but the locations provided us with amazing still life, which you will see below (I think the apocalypse must have happened in the 90s).

I had to hold off on sharing this for a while as I used the same forest as part of the Scenic Portrait Project. I’m so happy to finally share!

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While the tragedy of the local wildfires continued into the autumn, I wanted to turn the ashes into something beautiful and planned out more ideas in my post-apocalypse inspired series. David was kind enough to be on call for nearly two months while we waited for the unexpected early snow to dry up, and we found a perfect single day window of opportunity. We made use of the aftermath of one of the Lethbridge grass fires (this one had been started by an out of control camp fire during the summer).

David put together an amazing outfit and totally fit the part. He even came prepared with weapon and tool props! It’s not often you have a conversation like this…
Subject: I brought an axe.
Photographer: Oh good, I can save the hammer and meat tenderizer for another model.

I’m loving this series and I hope to keep it going! (You can check out the first post-apocalypse photoshoot with Jenn here!)

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With heavy smoke in the air late this summer, unusually high temperatures, and crunchy vegetation from the lack of moisture, Southern Alberta was looking like the setting of a post-apocalyptic storyline. Since that is one of my favorite sub-genres of fiction, I jumped at the chance to create something out of it! Jenn loved the concept and immediately organized this amazing outfit for an epic female warrior out in the wastelands to become Morrígna. Once her outfit was finalized, she pooled together her resources (aka her amazing friends) and came up with a whole arsenal of weapons fit for a brutal post-apocalyptic lifestyle. I can hardly believe the crossbow is a children’s toy! (It’s from Europe… they do toys a little differently there!)

Jenn is a fierce, confident woman and was so perfect in this role. She managed to hide how sweet she actually is in real life and came across as someone you don’t want to mess with!

p.s. Jenn did her own makeup too! Here’s some background on why she chose her warrior name.

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Last month I had the privilege of being in my best friend Sarah’s wedding party, which was a strange change after usually being behind the camera at weddings! Sarah is a photographer herself and if you’ve been with me for a long time, you may have seen her second shoot weddings for me in my early years.

Sarah has also modelled for me quite a few times with her horses…

On her wedding day she hired the insanely talented David & Sherry Photography to capture most of the day but asked me to photograph her getting ready at the guest house she operates with her now husband Chris, and I resumed for dance floor candids once David and Sherry left at the end of the evening. Be sure to follow them to see Sarah’s official photos from the day!

Sarah and Chris held their Kamloops rainbow themed wedding at Rainbow Roost, a beautiful farm on the city’s outskirts with a ton of adorable animals. The wedding was distinctly Sarah and Chris with their touches of humour and inclusion of their pets, Forest the dog and Theo the horse. I was honoured to share such a beautiful day with my friend and think they did an amazing job pulling it all together.

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It was the perfect combination. I was itching to take a fresh set of pink spring blossom portraits once the flowers came out in Lethbridge. Katie was high up on my list of models I wanted to work with. A friend donated this beautiful summery white dress to my photo collection. The day the flowers suddenly bloomed had no rain and even no wind. How much more perfect could it be?

Katie was fantastic to work with. She understood how crazy I get with these flowers and didn’t question why she needed to stand in a ladder in a tree. :)

The creative pink make-up was done by the talented Erin Kinney, who also did the fishtail braid Katie wore for the first half of our shoot.

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I recently had the opportunity to try out the Sleeklens Strike a Pose Portrait Workflow, which is an awesome collection of Lightroom presets and brushes designed for portrait editing. Using only the workflow and tools in Lightroom, I was able to fully edit my images without needing to open them in Photoshop for refined retouching (as I normally do). I was really impressed by the subtlety of the skin softening tools, make-up enhancements, and other effects that were included. Almost every preset worked great with my images, which comes as a surprise as presets are usually too extreme and need a lot of tweaking to make them work. These ones looked great as they were.

The make-up brushes were definitely a highlight of this set for me. The “add shine to lips” brush is probably my favourite, which added a very natural looking gloss to the lips. The two blush colours were also very natural and can be tweaked if the colour isn’t quite right, but I loved them in their default colours as an accent to the blush already on the model’s face.

I pulled up a few of my photos of Megan from this summer to see what looks I could achieve using only the portrait workflow. I started with images straight out of camera and played around with the presets on my own, rather than following the product’s recipe list.

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