Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

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 ;)

The spring blossoms in Lethbridge in 2020 were amazing, and I think we may have had the nicest May long weekend ever! Piper’s family took advantage of this perfect spring and their extra time together during quarantine for a spring blossom mini session. We found tons of beautiful pink flowers only a block from their house. They walked over with their dog Poppy for their cute family session.

Amanda and Zach didn’t want any ordinary photos! I met Amanda years ago when I did her grad photos. She reached out again to have me photograph her with the love of her life (Zach) as well as the other love of her life (Cosmo). She came prepared with a list of ideas for their fun West Lethbridge couples photos. In the end, we created an unconventional couples session filled with favourite activities and inside jokes.

One element that made the session even more over the top was that it had just snowed and was freezing out, so they probably turned a few heads when people saw them playing board games outside in the winter weather.

As another cute touch, they brought along the shirts they each wore on their first date!

We laughed through the entire session (even during the more traditional poses) and had so much fun despite the temperature.

When Jenn told me, “We are a silly family and enjoy weird things!” on her intake form, I knew we were going to end up with some quirky family photos!

Ken and Jenn had many reasons to celebrate when they had their family session over Thanksgiving. It was the first time they were all together in over a year after some of the girls went away to school, and they had just gotten guardianship of their son! They also wanted some photos to honour their aging dogs Jack and Mr. Nibbles. The dogs were thrilled to be included in the action!

Their silliness came out through the entire session with tons of action shots, flexing, bunny ears, and piggyback rides.

What’s the best way to celebrate 40 years of marriage? Barbara and Larry chose to celebrate by telling their kids they were making a one hour detour before dinner to do 40th anniversary family photos!

Barbara has seen many couple start their lives together in her time as a marriage officiant, so it was wonderful to see her celebrate her own marriage! I’m so grateful to constantly be included in their family’s milestones for photos.

This session was lots of fun now their grandson is old enough to pose and make silly faces on command, though I think his uncle was even more of a ham in front of the camera! We spent this warm evening down in Lethbridge’s river bottom, and even got to visit some goats at the end.

I have been wanting to give newborn puppy photos the human baby treatment forever, so when I found out Tayler’s Siberian Husky Winter was about to have babies, I was so ready for it!

Winter had a litter of seven adorable puppies. I had to wait until they were just big enough that they looked more like dogs and so their eyes wouldn’t be hurt by the flashes, then brought all my baby posing props over for an adorable photoshoot.

The puppies are still at the super sleepy age, but a few were starting to get very rambunctious (if you’re wondering why some photos have only 6 sleeping puppies out of 7). They are all so sweet and soft and it was hard to go home without one at the end!