Lethbridge Weddings & Portrait Photography by Tanya Plonka

Tanya was in need of updated professional headshot photos and her house made a great studio! She collects artwork on her travels and it added such great pops of colour in the background. By the way, doesn’t she have a great name? ;) Even her dog Will got to update his headshots while he waited for her to switch outfits.

After her headshots, we finished the session with Lethbridge winter coulee pet photos. Tanya regularly goes cross country skiing with Will. There wasn’t quite enough snow at the edge of the coulees to actually put her skis on, but we brought them along to pose with.

One sign of a good photographer is being able to photograph black pets and still have details show. I think it is an entirely new challenge to photograph a white dog in the snow! In a few spots the snow was a little deep for Will but he had so much fun bounding through the powder!

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Each fall, Mishaela and her sister have their photos taken together for their parents to display in their home. This year marked a break in that tradition while Mishaela was away for school, but she couldn’t let her mother’s wall go empty! She surprised her parents for Christmas with beautiful Lethbridge autumn portraits of herself. I can’t believe the day we chose – Mishaela got the absolute best of the fall colors two days before the snow and wind knocked them all down!

To celebrate her time away at school, Mishaela incorporated props from her education into a few of the photos. Once in a while her stethoscope, textbooks, or flute would make an appearance. She chose just the right number of textbooks to be the perfect height to lean onto! Mishaela has such a positive, upbeat personality and was so much fun to work with.

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This spring I got to meet a bunch of amazing students from the 2017 graduating class for their Calvin Christian High School grad photos. We started in the morning at the Norland Bed and Breakfast. I was impressed with how organized they all were, arriving in shifts so they could perfectly time hair and makeup around breakfast and their early graduation ceremony. The girls had such gorgeous, colourful dresses and every colour showed up at least once!

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Tayler had a new addition to add to her annual Barnwell family pet photos this year… their adorable Husky Winter! Winter joined their family a year ago and is a perfect companion to the other seasonal dogs, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. Winter fits right in and loves playing with her fur siblings! I love coming out to Tayler’s house every year for her portrait session and hanging out with her, her mom, and all of their adorable critters. This year we had to work a little faster because it kept raining. This came as a surprise as it was one of the very few days it rained all summer! Luckily most of the animals didn’t mind being outside when it was damp. The cats were the exception, but it was a little easier to round each one up for a special portrait with Tayler when they were all hiding inside in the dryness ;)

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With heavy smoke in the air late this summer, unusually high temperatures, and crunchy vegetation from the lack of moisture, Southern Alberta was looking like the setting of a post-apocalyptic storyline. Since that is one of my favorite sub-genres of fiction, I jumped at the chance to create something out of it! Jenn loved the concept and immediately organized this amazing outfit for an epic female warrior out in the wastelands to become Morrígna. Once her outfit was finalized, she pooled together her resources (aka her amazing friends) and came up with a whole arsenal of weapons fit for a brutal post-apocalyptic lifestyle. I can hardly believe the crossbow is a children’s toy! (It’s from Europe… they do toys a little differently there!)

Jenn is a fierce, confident woman and was so perfect in this role. She managed to hide how sweet she actually is in real life and came across as someone you don’t want to mess with!

p.s. Jenn did her own makeup too! Here’s some background on why she chose her warrior name.

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It was the perfect combination. I was itching to take a fresh set of pink spring blossom portraits once the flowers came out in Lethbridge. Katie was high up on my list of models I wanted to work with. A friend donated this beautiful summery white dress to my photo collection. The day the flowers suddenly bloomed had no rain and even no wind. How much more perfect could it be?

Katie was fantastic to work with. She understood how crazy I get with these flowers and didn’t question why she needed to stand in a ladder in a tree. :)

The creative pink make-up was done by the talented Erin Kinney, who also did the fishtail braid Katie wore for the first half of our shoot.

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