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 and boudoir, maternity sessions and so on. View the portraits and other photos we’ve zeroed in on this week and read the backstories on the how they were created.

Elena Lazuli remembers this bridal processional well, she says. The Belgrade, Serbia-based wedding photographer observed as the party danced and sang freely, with all eyes on the bride. “Her dress suited her energy—it was fresh, it was unique, and like her, full of rapture,” she recalls. “I wanted to capture that. That feeling that everything is just the way it is because of her and her love.”

Christine Ashburn got to photograph a couple’s elopement along the banks of the Hudson River (while their big-wedding plans were put on hold from the pandemic), after they reached out to her last-minute for coverage. Absent an officiant, Ashburn suggested one, and created a ceremony timeline that would coincide with the setting sun. Two friends attended the ceremony, after which they wandered for portraits.

“For this shot, I put the couple directly in between the low setting sun and I,” Ashburn explains. “The sun’s bright rays were partially obscured by the mountain. The dark background behind the couple helped to highlight the sun’s outline around them. I set my Nikon D850 to f/13 to better define the sun’s rays, and upped my ISO to 1250. My shutter speed was set at 400 to help eliminate camera shake, as I carefully rocked back and forth to let the sun flare across my lens just right.”

[Read: 9 Things You Need To Develop a Signature Photography Style & Aesthetic]

Juliana Cole captured the adapted iteration of a couple’s wedding in December last year. Determined to get married in 2020, they downsized their guest list and opted for a ceremony at the bride’s alma mater in Ohio. Cole wanted to get portraits inside to escape the winter chill, and “while looking for spots to use indoors,” she explains, “I saw the massive windows and knew that I’d be able to use them to capture the really dramatic effect of the light coming in to highlight the couple. When I put them in front of the window and told them to just soak in that ‘just married feeling,’ they just stood there in a little love cocoon.”

[Read: 9 Tips for Sculpting Natural and Artificial Light at Weddings]

Myriam Ménard styled and planned an elopement in Chile, where she has lived for the last five years. She took to mountains that were only an hour outside of downtown Santiago, near the ski resort Valle Nevado, where people can climb up and reach an altitude of 3,500 meters. With the sun pouring in, Ménard photographed the groom, a friend and photojournalist, and the bride, a model and makeup artist, climbing in the sky.

[Read: The Rule of Thirds—How to Use It and When to Break It]

Gabrielle Desmarchais flew from Montreal to Thailand last February to photograph a wedding between a couple who had met in Ottawa, Canada, a few years prior. A couple days before the ceremony, on Valentine’s Day, Desmarchais wandered the streets of Bangkok with the couple to take portraits. “Bangkok was waking up slowly,” she recalls. “The shops were getting ready to open, the deliveries were being made and people were rushing to go to work. I asked the couple to cross the busy street, and I stayed on the other side to take photos of them with tuk-tuk and motorcycles passing in between us, creating that movement blur.”

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