Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

I currently have the honour of having my photography on display at the Galt Museum. Last year I was contacted by curator Tyler Stewart to contribute to his music inspired exhibit “From Pianos to Power Chords” and I eagerly jumped at the chance. Music has been very important to me my whole life, from my first concert at the age of 8, to the various instrument lessons I have taken, to being heavily involved in dance for the last 12 years.

Concert photography is literally the reason I became a professional photographer. What started out as a hobby quickly grew into a passion. It was this passion and the overwhelmingly positive feedback I received from the local bands I photographed that convinced me to switch my major into photography and I have never regretted that decision. It is such an honour after all these years to see my band photography as a part of this exhibit of Lethbridge’s history. A couple of my photos go WAY back… for example, the Grady photo (Gordie Johnson) at the Roadhouse was taken the first day I owned my first digital SLR!

The exhibit runs until April 30 at the Galt Museum and I highly recommend checking it out! My photos here only show off my contribution but there’s so much more on display that paints an amazing picture of the history of music in Lethbridge.

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Thank you so much to everyone who voted this year! Because of your support I was voted the best photographer in Lethbridge for 2017 in the Sun Times Best of the Best.

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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Sophia’s mom wanted to combine a few years’ worth of her photos to show how much she has grown and an album was a perfect way to do this! It was so fun to revisit these photos and see how much Sophia has grown over the years. This album is a 5×7″ Modern Album with 20 pages and will make such a cute keepsake for their family.

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I’m excited this year to be offering a new way to receive your digital files… custom wooden USB boxes! Now that so many computers are being produced without CD-roms, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for wedding couples and anyone purchasing their digital images from their sessions to access their photos afterwards.

This new box has an image etched in the lid and the USB drive itself is wood with custom engraving. It’s such a great keepsake for your images when you prefer digital!

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I’m excited this year to be offering a new style of album, the Modern+ Album! This is an upgrade to my regular Modern Albums featuring a square size and special finish on the thick pages, tailored especially for weddings. This album comes in a 10″ square size and is presented in a fabric bag (various choices available).

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