Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

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!

Baby Adelita has arrived! (Which means Groot the dog is a big brother now!) I got to meet her at her Coaldale newborn session and loved seeing how happy her parents are every time they look at her. Adelita was used to company by now because her grandmother was visiting to help the first time parents out.

Awesome headshots aren’t just for office staff! The trades need headshots of their staff too. Showing your employees creates a more personal experience for your clients; they get to see who they are hiring!

Platinum Lighting recently updated their website and needed something more professional and consistent than the cell phone photos they were using before.

We did the photos on-site at one of their current jobs in Lethbridge’s historic Paramount Theatre building. The office they were working on had some great exposed brick features and we were able to use the Paramount’s lobby for a little more variety.

Last year Tradesman MFG contacted me to update their staff photos for their website. I set up my mobile studio in their company break room and each employee was sent up for a photo, only disrupting their day by a few minutes.

Once the staff was done, I ventured out to the factory floor for industrial stock photos personalized to the work that Tradesman Manufacturing does. Donning my hardhat, I received a tour of their whole facility and was able to photograph both their products and their employees hard at work.

To celebrate the shared first birthdays of kitties Audrey and Franklin, their human mom treated them to a Lethbridge cat session. Each cat got a special birthday outfit. Franklin looked dashing in his sparkly bowtie, while Audrey turned heads with her purple tutu.

The kitties were very excited to have me visit their birthday party, though Audrey quickly decided the camera was super scary (I was totally fine, it just wasn’t allowed to cover my face!). We had to use some trickery to get photos of her, while Franklin was much simpler to please. For him, a well placed toy led him anywhere we wanted!

I was able to provide both commercial and event photography last year when Western Financial Group opened their new branch on the west side of Lethbridge. Prior to their big public opening, I visited the location to do on-site portraits of their manager and staff.

Later that month, they had a grand opening event where they invited the other branches to check out the new space. Mayor Spearman came along to help with the ribbon cutting. Their marketing person managed to track down a pair of those ridiculous over-sized scissors for the special occasion, and the scissors were a huge hit with the attendees! I floated around the event capturing candid photos of the guests, as well as a few portraits with stakeholders.