Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

While at the Estate Party at Photoshop World in Boston, Michael and I met Jodi, a graphic designer and model from Illinois, and luckily she was up for doing a photo shoot with us the next day! We chose to do a boudoir shoot with her at the hotel to show off all her great ink; this girl knows how to choose tattoo artists. I’d also like to point out that she is approaching 50, and look at her! I hope I age that well!

She brought along a wonderful selection of wigs for the shoot, but her real hawk was pretty fun too :)

Thanks so much for shooting with us Jodi, and thanks to Ian for assisting with lighting!

I kept this entry safe-for-work, so feel free to click:
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Yesterday I took part in a great collaborative fashion shoot at the Hotel Arts in downtown Calgary. Our team consisted of three photographers, three assistants, five models, two makeup artists, and one hair stylist/salon – as well as the Hotel management and staff themselves. Throughout the evening we broke off into our teams and worked with the gorgeous models, making use of the beautiful space in the hotel. It felt really rushed (I feel like I barely shot anything!) but I was definitely pleased with the results and with the great collaboration we had going on.

Special thanks to Michael Warf for organizing the bulk of this, Torin Segstro for being my lighting assistant, the Hotel Arts for having us, and to all the models (Mikyuki, Melissa, Elaina, Rydell, and Lacey)!

I’ll hopefully share more of the shots later, but for now here are my favorites:

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Today I had the pleasure of doing a photo session with a woman out of Edmonton who has a fantastic name: Tanya! Once you get over the awkward “Hi Tanya, this is Tanya” on the phone, you stop noticing :)

Tanya (her, not me) wanted to show that she’s a hot mama (and boy is she ever!) so she braved the chilly wind in her sexy blue dress. Luckily the sun popped out a few times, and we could keep her coat nearby when needed. Summer is soooo close, but needs to hurry up a bit more!

She has such an amazing, huge, sparkling white smile and is full of positive energy, so I had to snap quickly to get the more serious shots… but I definitely prefer the smiling ones :)

I really wanted to do a photo shoot when I went to Las Vegas, so I was thrilled to find out Erin would be there while I was, along with one of her sisters, Krista, and her mom, Verna. I photographed Erin’s wedding to Jonathan last summer with Litwin Photography, and will be shooting her sister Bethany’s wedding this upcoming summer (my last Litwin booking), so I’ve come to know the family quite well!

Verna didn’t want to be in the photos, but Krista was easy to talk into doing a few with her sister. In my limited location scouting time, I picked out the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace as our location, and was really glad I did! In under an hour we shot outside AND on all three levels of that part of the mall, so we got tons of awesome shots.

Ideally, I would have kicked all the other people out of the area and gotten some cool photos on the spiral escalators, but well… maybe one day when I’m famous and have that sort of pull ;)

I was also really disappointed that no one else tried to jump into our photos like when Sarah and I did our shoot! I guess this time, we shot too early in the evening for passerbys to be drunk!

Thanks, girls, for being my models!

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On Sunday I got to partake in one of the most exciting shoots I’ve ever done! A group of photographers made up of Lethbridge folk and Calgary Strobists got together with the U of L swimming team, a group of models, a fashion designer (Caitlin Power), a makeup artist, and a scuba diver (Chris) for what can only be described as epic. Michael Warf, Kevin Logan, Cody Belter, and I split off to do head shots of the swimmers while the other photogs set up for the fashion shoot, and then we all headed to the dive take window to take part. All the models and swim team must really be commended for the great work they did… their jobs were not easy!

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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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