Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

Christina and Layne chose a beautiful sunny day for their river bottom winter maternity photos. I absolutely love golden hour at this time of year with how much the warm tones glow in the sun. We only had a bit of snow to deal with in the background! Christina radiated joy for her baby arriving soon.

She and Layne also brought along their first child, JackJack. JackJack is a very small dog with a blonde mohawk! I have never seen such a unique dog before! He wasn’t so sure about what we were up to but he was a good sport about the whole thing.

(more…)

Jordanna and Deiter managed to sneak in vibrant Lethbridge autumn engagement photos before the snow arrived! We used lots of snuggling and hand holding to get them through the crisp cold that day. I think they did a great acting job making it look like a warm autumn evening. It definitely helps that they are so cute when they cuddle each other! I had a great time exploring the Helen Schuler Nature Reserve with this upbeat couple and can’t wait for their wedding in a few months.

(more…)

2018 was a great year! Cam and I spent so much of the year with people totally in love and the joy was contagious. These probably aren’t truly our best wedding photos from the last year, but they definitely made me smile going back through the memories!

This year we saw a bride ride a horse for the first time ever in her wedding dress, photographed through smoky skies, and laughed at far more hilarious kids than any past year. Like, so many kids let loose this year that there must have been some memo passed around at the beginning of the wedding season.

Even though I picked most of these out of my blog edits, I made it a goal to choose photos that have never been on social media! There’s a good chance you’ve never seen most of these. Unless you’re my mom – she reads and likes pretty much everything I post. (Hi, Mom!)

I hope you enjoy looking through our best wedding photos of 2018 as much as I liked choosing them!

(more…)

When Erica contacted me to do her 10th anniversary family photos, I thought it would be fun to dig up her and Bill’s wedding photos from a decade ago for comparison. This is one of the weddings I did before I had my own business so it was going way back! Some of the photos were a little embarrassing to look back on, but I loved seeing how much I’ve improved since then.

Some observations:
1. Crazy Cakes has always had that square hole in the wall. (I’d normally edit that out, but it’s cute to see the building hasn’t aged much!)
2. Ten years ago the Dutch angle was very popular in wedding photography and I had a lot of trouble pulling out old photos to recreate that didn’t make me dizzy with their tilt. Wikipedia says, “the Dutch angle is one of many cinematic techniques often used to portray psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed,” making me scratch my head as to how this was such a huge wedding photography trend!
3. Erica and Bill are just as in love as 10 years ago.

It’s amazing to see the happy family they’ve grown into. Their two boys are such joyful, energetic kids and had a blast finding new surfaces to jump off of throughout the photos. We started the session downtown to revisit a few of the locations we had used in their wedding photos. Next we headed to the Helen Schuler Nature Reserve so we could make giant piles of leaves for throwing. I think our success at having fun is directly related to how many leaves the boys had to pull out of their shirts when we were done!

(more…)

This summer I teamed up with a local organization to build up their image library with Lethbridge lifestyle photography. After running a model call on my website, several families were selected to take part in the project. I got to work with such a diverse group of people, from friends to past clients to some new faces! We ended up with so many natural and joyful images for the organization to choose from. Here are some of my favorites!

(more…)

I had an amazing time getting to know Krista from AcuPlus Wellness Clinic as we planned her business branding session. Krista wanted to bring more of a personal touch to her business’s online presence since her work is so focused on her relationships with her clients. We started in her home to capture the themes of healthy eating that she encourages of her clients, as well as her love of animals and nature. Her cats made special cameos in the photo session! We then headed to her clinic, which is a warm environment full of beautiful artwork, and finished with headshots in Indian Battle Park to again capture her love of nature.

Business branding is such a fantastic new trend in marketing because it supplies you with custom stock photography to tie your website and social media together for a cohesive brand experience. Each business and individual comes away with photography that is totally unique to what they offer their clients!

(more…)