We kick off the week with some Halloween-themed weddings, breathtaking locations and even a splash of tequila! View the images below from Daniel Nydick, Susana Ríos and Emma Studley, and read how each image was executed.

New Jersey-based wedding photographer Daniel Nydick says this group composite is from couple Kevin and Ashley’s Halloween-themed wedding at Ramsey Golf and Country Club in New Jersey.

“They all brought their own masks,” he explains. “I found a pose for each person and asked them to hold in place while my assistant lit them one person at a time. (See the BTS shot below.)

Each image (18 in total including a plate shot) was shot with a Canon Mark IV, and each subject was lit with an AD200 with a MagGrid and MagSphere combo. “I don’t ever travel with a tripod, so I hold extremely still while shooting composites,” says Nydick. “I then auto-align the layers (each image one by one) in Photoshop and then mask each layer to make the composite.”

The biggest hurdle of the group photo, Nydick admits, was getting everyone to not move until he took a photo of each person individually. “It makes the masking in Photoshop a little more challenging.”

Below is another image by Nydick, this time of couple Amanda and Greg, who had a Halloween-themed wedding at Blue Heron Pines in New Jersey, complete with pumpkins. Nydick shot it with a Canon Mark IV and used a 24-inch MagBox.

“The bride brought her own colored smoke bombs (we got more fun smoke bomb shots later in the night), so what you see here is all actually real,” says Nydick. “There were honestly no obstacles; it was a standard OCF photo using an AD600 with a softbox camera right.”

This next image, by Susana Ríos, was taken in Santiago de Compostela, Spain and while it wasn’t a Halloween-themed wedding, it does have a ghostly and beautifully haunting vibe emanating from it. The image, says Ríos, “is filled with a peaceful feel from the bride. I also like the imperfect perfection of the crooked columns.”

Also by Ríos, this image was taken in Pontevedra, Spain. “Working with flash during the reception allowed me to capture the beauty of the lights and highlight the beautiful back of the bride, but not in an explicit way.”

Emma Studley says that she likes the combination of blue and orange in a photo because they are complimentary colors in color theory, so whenever she gets the opportunity to shoot in the mountains around sunrise or sunset (like in the image below), she’s looking for that sweet spot. 

“My approach to the adventure elopements I shoot here in Washington is to keep things natural, while guiding the couple toward the best possible outcomes,” she explains. “I know this spot in the mountains super well, and I already knew that sunset in this spot provides an incredible glow—even more so this day as the air was a little smoky from local wildfires. Mount Baker (the mountain in the image) was important to capture because the groom had recently summited it, so as the sun lowered, I asked the couple to approach this viewpoint and simply take it all in. Mother nature did the rest.”

Dig into our Photo of the Day archives for more eye-catching images that include interesting locations, epic portraits and much more. Submit your wedding portraits, editorial, documentary and commercial images to:  [email protected]