Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

I’ve worked with Melissa many times for her family photos, but this time I had the opportunity to focus on just her! In addition to her work in the world of medicine, Melissa is also a local Lethbridge musician and needed some singer-songwriter promotional photos for her solo music she is working on.

Melissa usually plays guitar with a local rock band of other health care professionals, but her solo work shows a more vulnerable side. Normally my focus is on colour work, but a ton of black and white felt like such a good fit in this case.

Being a true rockstar, Melissa bared her arm and shoulder tattoos in the freezing cold for the sake of these photos!

Weddings and events may have been postponed in 2020 due to COVID, but once restrictions eased up in the summer, everyone was grateful to spend time outdoors with their families! I was so thankful we have such beautiful, wide open outdoor spaces around Lethbridge so I could keep photographing all of these awesome families. I ended up hoarse on many occasions from yelling through my mask, but it was always worth it.

Two of the biggest trends I noticed this year were all of the babies who arrived (and these aren’t even the quarantine babies yet!) and all of the larger families who made an effort to celebrate important anniversaries and birthdays. I adapted quickly by bringing most of the newborns outdoors on warm days and talking their parents through poses. Everyone did so well!

Some highlights from 2020 include not one but TWO marriage proposals, a cat birthday, and a few more secret projects to come that I can’t share yet, including album art for local musicians and a children’s book. Each season was so amazing this year, from the long blossom season we had to the vibrant colours in the fall. Even the early snow was warm enough for outdoor photos!

COVID is not getting in the way of Ammena Dance Company‘s annual show! Thanks to Zoom dance classes and the Yates Theatre pivoting to do live streams of shows, the dancers have been hard at work in their homes preparing the dances. As long as we’re allowed to get together for performances by March, the show will be live streamed to ticket holders. This means you don’t have to live in Lethbridge to see the show this year!

This year’s theme is a haunting, centring around the ghosts rumoured to reside at the theatre. I had two ideas for posters around our spooky show. The first was inspired by vampires and Rocky Horror Picture Show (“The Time Warp” appears in one of our dances). For the second, I wanted to take the ghost theme literally and create multiple exposures where our choreographer, Lise-Anne, was the ghost. Because I couldn’t decide, I just did both! (The second design can be seen after the “read more” page cut.)

In the 2021 show we have the return of a few favourites that were missing from last year, such as Bollywood, and new additions like lyrical!

Tickets for households can be purchased through the City of Lethbridge’s tickets website up until the show.

Renae’s personal branding photo session was such a blast! Renae is the brains and heart behind Beautiful Inside Academy, which empowers young women. After our New York trip in December, we started brainstorming some ideas for her session and were finally able to get together in the summer after all of the quarantine upheaval.

The focus in Renae’s work is her connection with her clients and sending a message of self-love, so it was important for the photos to focus on her and show that level of confidence and happiness. Her branding – both business and personal – is based around a strong white and black colour palette, with splashes of pink. I chose a number of white and grayscale backdrops for us to use to really make Renae pop!

Eve’s graduation wasn’t quite as she expected it to be with how our year played out, but she was still able to celebrate in less traditional ways! Her class had an outdoor event to celebrate their accomplishment, and it was better late than never for her photography session! We did her Pavan Park graduation photos late in summer instead of our original plan for spring. Once her hair stylist and makeup artists were open again, they had a bit of a waitlist to catch up on!

Her dark blue gown made for such a dreamy look among the bright colours in the mid-afternoon, and still looked amazing in the darker shade of the trees. Plus it had just enough volume for some fun twirling photos!

Eve’s mom and little brother came along to help with her photos and were able to enjoy the gorgeous afternoon outside together. She wasn’t technically a university student yet, so it still counted as being a high schooler ;)

For this virtual assistant branding session, it was all about the woman behind the business! Brooke is the owner of Out of Sight Online and for this photoshoot we focused on her and her personality she brings to her clients.

Brooke used to be a general purpose virtual assistant but has recently shifted her business to focus primarily on podcasters. This was where she found her passion for what she does and her favourite clients!

The great thing about being a virtual assistant is the ability to work from anywhere (which usually means at home), but this also meant Brooke didn’t have a proper “office” space for us to use for her at work images. For that we turned to Jonny Bean Coffee in Lethbridge, whose bright and modern space was perfect for Brooke’s brand. (Plus we got to have tasty drinks during that part of the session.)

For Brooke’s branding photos we wanted to show that she gets things done, is approachable, and offers a very one on one service. I kept everything bright and airy while pulling in the blue and gold accent colours from her website and logo, while Brooke found a perfect wardrobe to match.