Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

Ralphie & Lady’s human mom Taelynn booked her girls a cat photo session. Taelynn cited “cats being adorable” as their special occasion for the photos, and I couldn’t agree more! Both kitties are 10 years old but still extremely playful, especially once catnip gets brought out. You need to work with cats in ways where they are always comfortable, so there was a lot of chasing as we bounced from one piece of their favourite furniture to another.

We mostly focused on the cats, but Taelynn was on hand to jump in for a few photos and offer assistance wildly waving toys around (her hand made it into a lot of hilarious action shots). I had so much fun playing with the kitties!

Abuelo Alfredo was visiting all the way from Spain, and this trip was his first time meeting his grandchildren. What an amazing trip! This Lethbridge twins candid photo session was so adorable with the kids playing with their abuelo. (We did try to get more posed photos, but the twins were NOT having it!)

We went to the Galt Museum for their family photoshoot so the kids and their abuelo could run around free and not worry about the cold and winter coats. They loved looking out the big windows together and playing tag, plus a lot of fun rolling around on the floor :)

I definitely got my exercise chasing them around, as did Alfredo and their mom!

With some careful schedule planning, Gord and Kathy were able to get all three of their kid’s families to celebrate Christmas together, and squeeze in a Lethbridge indoor winter family session at the same time. All of their grandchildren are getting quite big so they were definitely overdue for some photos together!

This set of cousins has such a great time together and spent every moment they could between photos playing with each other and their grandparents (the parents were a little forgotten about). To keep up the fun, the session ended with a flossing dance off (mostly between the adults).

p.s. A huuuuuge thank you to Vicky at Honkers Pub for letting us use The Nest Event Space when it was below -20C and everything else was closed for Christmas.

Emmalyn arrived a few weeks earlier than expected, which was quite a surprise for her mom and dad who were expanding their business at the same time and trying to focus on opening a new location before she arrived. She quickly changed their focus (and added a few long days for her dad). We did the photos on her original due date, so even though she had been hanging around for a couple weeks, she was still newborn tiny and fit perfectly in her parents’ hands.

Her mom had some favourite photo ideas of what she wanted their photoshoot to look like, so we went with a very simple newborn photo session. This meant clean backgrounds and lots of photos that would look great in black and white, and with a focus on Emmalyn.

Emmalyn did throw a bit of a wrench in our plans in that she refused to do any photos where she wasn’t being held! As a result we got so many great photos with her mom and dad holding her. In the end she compromised with us by doing a few by herself as long as she was swaddled.

I’m so grateful for families who take me along on the journey as their family grows. It’s been amazing watching Lindsay and Terry go from their engagement to welcoming Jaxson home. Aside from some perfectly normal fatigue from him keeping them up all night, the two of them are so completely in love with their baby. I got to meet him for his Lethbridge newborn photography session, which must have been a pretty exciting day for him seeing as how he didn’t sleep at all through the session! Any sleeping photos are completely fake moments where he relaxed and rested his eyes for a moment ;)

Hlady Rouleau Law Office needed to update their photos to refresh their website and wanted the professional feel of a library. We did their law office headshots using one of the lawyer’s individual offices as a backdrop. With just a little bit of rearranging (and hiding any personal photos and collectibles), the bookcase worked perfect.

This goes to show any space can work for photos. By the time myself, the lights, and the lawyers squished into the office, there was no room left for their web designer who was overseeing the photoshoot!