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. This week, we continue to feature some of the eye-catching portraits and photos that caught our attention from our show brand WPPI’s The Annual Live Judging event and Honors of Excellence Awards ceremony in Las Vegas on August 18, 2021. Included are the fascinating backstories on how each image was created.

During lockdown, portrait photographer Paulina Duczman was trying to come up with ways to deliver something really unique to her clients. She thought about putting a little twist on family portrait mini sessions by giving them some boho flair.

[Read: 9 Family Portrait Poses in 15 Minutes—Fast Flow for Mini Sessions]

“I had spent over a week searching for perfect dry flowers with the correct color tones,” Duczman explains, “and then I made the flower arch myself.”

Kamila, pictured here with her children, was one of the first clients to book what became a very successful series of minis with Duczman. “She really wanted the boho style mixed with my unique editing style,” says the photographer, who submitted this image to WPPI’s The Annual 2021 awards competition and walked away with a third-place prize in the Portrait Division’s “Group + Families” category.

There’s something almost Rodney Smith-esque about this illustrative black-and-white portrait by photographer Kenneth Lam. At first glance it looks like it could be a fashion portrait, however the Hong Kong-based photographer submitted the image to WPPI The Annual’s Creative Division, where he won third in the “Pre-Wedding Creative” category—meaning that this is not a model but a bride-to-be. Flipping her upside down so that her billowing dress can represent the blossom of a flower is one thing; placing her high in the sky is a new level of surrealism that we appreciate.

Dayna Riesgo loves that when she’s photographing animals, she’s contending with unpredictable personalities and even more spontaneous resulting images. “I had this opportunity with this sweet and beautiful blue-eyed leucistic ball python, Heroki,” Riesgo says. “As the owner of a ball python myself, I’m always ready to jump in and handle snakes and reptiles, and I thought he would be a perfect setting to capture this couple’s unique wedding bands that the the groom custom-designed with stones he mined himself.”  

Because the shoot was extending into the evening and snakes are nocturnal animals, Riesgo found it a bit challenging to incorporate props with Heroki’s poses, as the python was pretty active and not very interested in staying in one place for very long. She decided to skip the props entirely and come up with something simpler, setting Heroki up on a V-flat.

“After some time, he all of a sudden settled into the absolute perfect shape and became completely still, creating his own circles juxtaposed with the rings,” Riesgo recalls. “Securing the rings was now becoming a bigger challenge than the snake—he was the one that had to be patient as I was hurrying to attach the rings together with some museum wax.” 

She continued the circular motif she had going by choosing an oval matte on the print she submitted to WPPI’s The Annual, where her photo—printed on Canson Baryta Prestige paper “for good contrast and a smooth glossy look befitting that of a snake,” she says—placed third in the Portrait Division’s “Animals + Pets” category.

Feng He wowed the WPPI The Annual judges in multiple areas of the competition this year, but for this one, he won a first place Grand award in the Pre-Wedding Division’s “Couple Together: Non-Wedding Day” category. Some strategic placement of the bride-to-be made it look like she was on the ledge of a high tower. Her groom in silhouette in the middle of the window frame, she is lit by a light hiding behind one of the columns. It’s a fantastical photo that certainly leaves the viewer wanting more of the story.

Rachel Owen‘s son became a high school student at the height of the spread of COVID-19, and she wanted to create an image that would convey the sense of underrepresentation they were experiencing at that time. She went with a more modern, pandemic-era rendition of the “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” theme.

“I told my son I needed him for a photo and he—being a teenage boy growing up with two photographers for parents—looked at me and said flatly, ‘You’ve got 10 minutes, Mom,'” Owen recalls. Knowing WPPI The Annual’s single-capture limit, she decided to make it a triple exposure. “Also knowing my son would make good on his 10-minute cooperation limit, I spent a couple of hours in preparation with video tutorials on best multiple exposure practices and setting the lighting with my husband as a test subject,” Owen says.

Starting out with a 50mm lens, she ultimately switched to her 100mm lens to compress more of the figure as she overlapped her son’s shoulders. She went with a butterfly lighting setup—”I wanted the ominous look of shadows cutting in the cheekbones,” Owen says. “Then it was just a matter of getting the right amount of kicker to separate him from the background but not distract.”

In the end, the shoot took 22 minutes. “My husband and son had a great time laughing at me as I frantically tried to get every detail right within my time limit,” she says. “The VR goggles and headphones kept messing up his hair, and I wouldn’t let him move a muscle until all three exposures had been taken.”

With this photo, which won second place in the “Children + Teenager” category, Owen says, “my hope for my son and this generation is that he would learn to pay attention to what is around him, genuinely listen to the opinions of others, and to have sound arguments for what he believes with the courage to speak it out.” She called the image “Liturgy 2020” and wrote a poem to coincide with it:

Liturgy 2020
He will not see for his vision is regulated⁠⠀
Let us not see evil⁠⠀
He will not hear for his ears ring with a technological hum⁠⠀
Let us not hear evil⁠⠀
He will not speak for institution has vanquished his voice⁠⠀
Let us not speak of evil⁠⠀
We mirror his stare and turn a blind eye⁠⠀

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