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. Discover the eye-catching portraits and photos that stopped us in our tracks this week, some of which for the way a photographer captured the photo from above, and each earning a place in WPPI’s The Annual 16×20 Print, Album and Filmmaking competition this year.

It can be tricky to think of creative ways to photograph a wedding in a hotel, but Hong Kong-based photographer Cooper Chan really mixed it up for this bridal party shot by capturing the photo from above. This image actually went on to place second in the “Bridal Party/Family and Friends” category within the Wedding Division of WPPI’s The Annual 16×20 Print, Album and Filmmaking competition this year.

“The spiral staircase is a feature of the hotel,” Chan explains. “I arranged the groom and the groomsmen to chase the bride and bridesmaids. Two flashes were used to highlight and dramatize the staircase and the chase, and I’m very happy how the photo turned out.”

Stanley Babb, a photographer based in South Florida, captured an emotional wedding where one of the party’s important figures, the father, had passed away not too long before the ceremony. The mother and her three sons were “pretty emotional for the entire ceremony,” Babb recalls. “I watched and waited for them to come together.”

The ceremony’s close turned out to be right time to zero in on their shared emotions. “As the mom hugged her son, I waited to frame the two brothers consoling them,” Babb says. “This image took a bit of patience, but it ultimately paid off,” earning him third place in the “Photojournalism” category within the Wedding Division of the competition.

For his aerial landscapes, Australia-based photographer Chris Saunders usually scopes out potential locations over Google Maps to find interesting pockets of the world to capture the photo from above and plan his route there. “The nature of this type of photography, more often than not, means that what you actually find on the day is very different from what you see on a screen and is more an indication of the type of features that you can expect to find,” Saunders explains.

This shot was taken over the Shark Bay World Heritage sight in Western Australia from a Cessna 172 aircraft, and it was, Saunders says, “one of those rare occasions where the plan and reality closely aligned—a couple of orbits over the top of the area gave me the image I was looking for.”

The image, called “Breathe,” placed first in the “Landscape + Travel” category within the competition’s Creative Division. Saunders actually swept that entire category this year!

“The oceans and seas of Earth are often referred to as the lungs of the planet, breathing oxygen and life into us,” he says. “This is my visual interpretation of a planet struggling to breathe but hanging on.”

Aries Tao, a photographer based in Sydney, loves to dive into the storytelling component of a couple’s pre-wedding shoot. He submitted several conceptual photos to WPPI’s The Annual that all related to what he called “anti-platonic love,” emphasizing that “a sexual relationship is the fundamental part of marriage.”

For this image, Tao took the couple, both tennis coaches, to the tennis court where they teach students the sport. “We started with some sportswear images and some bridal images on the court,” Tao says. “I regard these as my safe shots.”

Then Tao broke out the drone for a dramatic photo from above, which he later called “You Are One in a Million” that represented the germination of an embryo. “Each tennis ball represents a sperm,” the photographer explains. “They all together form a sperm shape. The groom within the circle represents the winner sperm,” and he’s “holding the tennis racket in an opposite way, hitting the bride’s veil, as a metaphor for intercourse. The bride’s veil wrapped around obviously represents the egg.”

The photo, which also nods to Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” placed first in the “Couple Together: Non-Wedding Day” category within the competition’s Pre-Wedding Division.

This might look like a bridal detail, but it’s actually a concept shot by photographer Sean Tan using his wife’s wedding ring that he wanted to create for her. In thinking about what a wedding ring represents, Tan kept coming back to the fact that it represents two people devoting themselves to each other for the rest of their lives. So, he decided to create a photo incorporating the ring that would represent that connection between two people.

“The word ‘connection’ reminded me of string, and ‘two people’ reminded me of the word ‘hug,’ so I used a cotton thread to draw a couple hugging and used the ring to tie the couple together,” says Tan, who shot the photo from above.

The challenge he faced was lighting the shot. He wanted the ring to appear sharper and more three-dimensional, so after testing several setups, he decided on bookending his creation with speed lights pointing inward. “The surface of the ring and diamond reflected light from the environment,” he notes, “so I tried to use a black reflector to block the environment’s light source.”

This image placed first in the “Details + Decor” category within the competition’s Creative Division.

Dig into our Photo of the Day archives for even more compelling and eye-catching portraits and creative imagery that features directional light and silhouettes, movement and connection.