Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

“Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place.”
-A Midsummer Night’s Dream

If you saw Shakespeare in the Park’s summer performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Lethbridge last year, you’ll definitely remember Titania, played by the talented Megan! Between the incredible presence she had as the character and how dreamy her whole look came together, I had to get her to step into the role one more time for a creative photoshoot.

I waited until the wall of leaves turned its vibrant red colour in the fall, knowing it would be a perfect match for Megan’s hair. And it was even more close than I expected!

The most important part of my vision was a light painting portrait once it was dark enough out. Megan and our helper Leslie were amazing and committed – it started snowing on us as soon as we arrived at the final location and I needed Megan to hold still! None of us could feel our hands by the end but it was worth it :)

Gown by Amanda Epp
Makeup by Leslie Van Zwol

A few years ago I came up with an idea to do some dreamy floral light painting photography at the Henderson Lake rose garden in Lethbridge. Some years the roses didn’t bloom all too well, while other years I never had enough free evenings. This year after seeing how gorgeous the roses were, I made it happen! I’ve worked with Tuezday as a model in the past, and her gorgeous daughter Rain has recently started modelling as well. I was eager to get Rain in front of my camera and had to get them together for this! Rain is already a natural at modelling and did fantastic holding long poses. These photos were done well after dark, requiring a flash light to focus and then using light painting to create this dreamy, fantasy effect.

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I had so much fun doing Elizabeth’s costume photos last year so I was really excited when she contacted me again this year to do another fantasy concept shoot. This time the theme was around light based magic, inspired by a book series she is reading, and night portraits involving light painting were the perfect way to pull it off.

We found a flat spot near Lethbridge’s Pavan Park to get lots of wide open sky just after sunset and started with her blue and white fan veils she has been learning. The nice thing about fan veils is you don’t need to wait for the wind to make them look really cool :) We did a few ghosting photos with those, then it was finally dark enough to pull out the light painting tools!

Elizabeth was awesome at holding still while I ran around her and we all dealt with a swarm of mosquitoes :)

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I knew I’d be working with Hope for her modeling portfolio, but it wasn’t until I saw her awesome black vinyl bodysuit that I knew these were going to be some Tron Legacy inspired photos!

I’ve been wanting to do this photo shoot for a long time and had been flip flopping between being the photographer or being the model. The only problem was that I LOVE doing light painting, something a Tron photo shoot would definitely need, so I didn’t really want to give that up to someone else! (You know, the hour of patience it takes to do it through trial and error!) When Hope came into the picture with the most perfect wardrobe for it and perfect hair to pull off Gem’s style, my decision was made.

Lorelei Hoffarth and I teamed up for these photos and the funny thing was that we both independently decided we wanted to do light painting with Hope, but it wasn’t until we discussed the idea further we realized we were on the same page! It was so fun seeing the differences in our photos starting with the same model, wardrobe, hair, makeup, and even basic lighting techniques… We ended up with SUCH different images, and even our light painting techniques were vastly different.

Our lovely and talented model was Hope Vande Beek, who did a great job holding reeeeeaaaally long poses while we ran around her with all sorts of crazy flashlights and blinded her with flashes in a nearly pitch black room. Makeup was provided by Cayley Blande at Colors Salon and hair was styled by Jenn Burton, who both did a wonderful job. Last but not least, thank you so much to Lorelei for opening up your studio for this fun concept shoot!

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Okay, I admit, sometimes when it comes to me grabbing models and doing shoots I’ve planned out, I can get a little behind on editing them! So here it is, finally, the shoot I did with Cassandra just after I got back from California in November.

We revisited the old abandoned farm where we had shot her Zombie Pinups because I was just so in love with the inside of one of the barns. It has this strange (because I’m not a farm girl and don’t understand it!) series of metal rods running along grids inside, and tons of cracks for light to spill in. It was perfect for some daytime light painting! I love doing light painting on models… it’s just hard to get them to hold absolutely still for 30 seconds, but Cassandra was awesome at, you know, not breathing for that long.

Cassandra and I both hit our heads on the rods a few times, but luckily I never tripped!

After stepping over pigeon “remains” in there for long enough, she changed and we did some photos outside around the barns in her reeeeeeally cool blue corset. Not as cool as her Carmen San Diego hat, but cool nonetheless.

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Last weekend I managed to go back home for a few days, and take some photos I’ve been itching to do for some time! There really aren’t enough free weekends during wedding season to go to the CNP, and then it’s just too cold.

First I started with some light painting, and my mom helped as my assistant :)