Portrait photography can run the gamut in type and style—everything from the traditional “head and shoulders” shot to lifestyle and environmental, candid and street, glamour, boudoir, maternity sessions and much more. View some of the eye-catching photos of the week that stopped us in our tracks, discover the concepts behind them and how they were executed.

Jacob Gordon was nearing the end of the day at Australia’s Coogee Beach for this engagement sessions. Gordon, who loves incorporating architectural elements in his photographs, came across a structure that provided a perfectly circular silhouette that he could use to frame the couple. As the sun set, casting orange hues that contrasted the encroaching night sky, Gordon felt like the frame was missing an element of surprise.

“I noticed a couple close by enjoying fish and chips by the ocean,” he recalls. “I knew that with this, some birds would come. I waited patiently until everything lined up, and I managed to capture one of the birds in the frame. Gordon captured several frames, waiting for one that would show the bird’s entire wingspan.

Del and Jayjay, identical twin wedding photographers and filmmakers who are based in Scotland, couldn’t attend a couple’s wedding in January due to COVID-19 restrictions that limited attendance to five people, but they did arrange for an elopement-style shoot in Glencoe, Scotland.

They ran into another snag: “It turned out it was a bank holiday weekend, so our initial idea of having the iconic Mount Etive in the background was not plausible as there were far too many people and tents around,” they explain. Luckily, they had scoped the area the day before, so they had a backup plan.

“We set off on our hike early in the morning and the weather was cloudy, with the occasional break in the clouds allowing for some nice morning sunshine,” the siblings note. The destination itself was overcast, but they had toted along their Profoto B10, a couple of A1 studio lights and MagMod grids in case they wouldn’t get any breaks in the clouds.

“By the time we arrived at our destination, the sun was slightly higher and the light was quite harsh,” they say. “Never one to shy away from sunlight at any time in the day, we were hoping to use the hard light to our advantage to create as much drama as possible in the shot.”

Andy Tyler, a wedding photographer based in London, got a chance to photograph a wedding at the Natural History Museum in town, and with this opportunity, he knew he wanted to take a portrait of the couple featuring some of the museum’s distinct architecture.

“Walking around the gallery, which surrounds the main hall, I noticed these hanging birds that beautifully lined up with the colorful windows behind them,” Tyler says.

“To get the shot, I had to be on the other side of the gallery, about 150 feet away,” he explains. Tyler’s assistant stood in the center of the image behind the wall with a light as he photographed each of them separately (later compositing the two images together). “The challenge was to communicate with my assistant and couple,” Tyler notes, “but luckily we had radios that day so I could relay instructions to the couple through my assistant.”

Singapore’s Tim Sim of The Good Citizen took his couple to Jewel Changi Airport, a nature-themed entertainment wing and shopping center in Singapore, known for its 130-foot rain vortex. “We wanted to juxtapose the grandeur of the scene with our couple,” Sim says, “almost like a magical moment all to themselves in such a wondrous place.”

The timing was crucial, Sim says; he wanted to photograph them just as the vortex turned on for the day and before it got too crowded so as to preserve this feeling of seclusion. “We came on a weekday morning when all the kids were in school and adults were at work,” Sim says, “and we were duly rewarded with this setting with not a soul in sight! The most important thing was finding the perfect vantage point to capture both the bride and groom and the vortex. Framing is incredibly important.”

The day before this couple’s wedding, London-based photographer Ash Davenport of MIKI Studios flew into New York City at midnight to meet the couple in Times Square at 3 a.m. “It was one of the best things we have ever done because Times Square was empty and so were all of the tourist areas,” Davenport says.

They wandered the city for a few hours in the dark and found themselves in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, near the Brooklyn Bridge. “As this is a pretty iconic place, we wanted to have the place to ourselves and there weren’t many people about at 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning!”

After ticking all of the Brooklyn Bridge photo ops, Davenport took the couple further away. “Without coffee I am normally pretty useless, but on this occasion I had a higher sense of what might work. I was a few steps ahead of the couple and stopped in this archway, and with the mist and the bridge in the background, I knew there was something here.”

The couple walked back and forth as Davenport clicked the shutter, waiting for something a little extra and knowing it would come. “All of a sudden, a bird flew into the frame at the same time Hani looked at Julie. Instantly, I knew that was the image of the whole shoot. It captured everything New York without being an obvious New York shot.”

Dig into our Photo of the Day archives for even more compelling imagery.