Did you see our most recent Photos of the Day? In our daily series highlighting some of the most interesting images in wedding and portrait photography, the editorial staff asks the creatives behind the photos to detail the backstory and technical approach. Here’s what caught our eye this week.

Whispers at Parisian Engagement Session

This couple had flown from the U.S. for an engagement photo session in Paris, photographed by the duo Linh and Duc (Through the Glass). “Our idea was to shoot elegant and chic vibes for our couple by sitting in a Parisian café,” they say. “We asked Jonathan to whisper something funny or like a dirty joke into Ayanna’s ears to capture this moment.”

A Quirky Composition at Garden Wedding

Janina Brocklesby practiced ultimate patience to capture this shot at a wedding thrumming with garden-party activity in Cheshire, England. The little girl had caught her eye—rowdy and rambunctious, the girl had been playing with and running away from her father, who was dressed in a Scottish kilt. “I stuck around there for a bit longer, feeling that something different might happen,” Brocklesby says. She watched as the father lifted the girl into a wooden structure with two other older girls on either side of her. He bent down to adjust the girl’s dress, and “for that split second, he was perfectly lined up with her and not visible,” the photographer explains. “It was one of these moments that if I turned away or not had my camera right in front of me, I would have missed that very bizarre yet interesting moment and composition.”

Taking the Plunge

For a couple’s engagement shoot, South Africa-based photographer Matt Kay says he wanted to go for something “that was beautiful without being cliché” as they dove into water. “The tricky bit was trying to catch both of them at the right moment—and the early-morning sunrise light on the water, so exposure had to be spot on.” (Check out what exposure he wound up choosing in the gallery above)

Getting Practice in on First Dance

Photographer David Scholes had heard the groom say that they hadn’t practiced their first dance yet, so during the couple’s portrait session before the reception, Scholes recalls, “I said, ‘Do it now then.’ From this, I saw that there was a big spin at both the start and the end of the dance.”

Earlier, he spotted that the reception was to be held in a barn, complete with festoon lights draped over the dance floor and a balcony nearby that could offer a bird’s-eye view of the whole scene. “I saw the potential for a shot straight away,” Scholes says. “My ‘go-to’ shot during a first dance is always with the guests as a background so I can see their reactions, and more often than not, I light it with a speed light or two—or three.

When it came time for the real first dance, Scholes was prepared: “After I had some of these shots and I captured the guests’ reactions to the first twirl, I ran as fast as I could to the balcony to get the shot I had in mind. I had a minute or two to practice it until the twirl at the end, which turned out better than I hoped.”

Warming Up to Golden Hour

Chicago-based photographer Emily-Melissa Walker had a somewhat challenging brief for this engagement session: The couple wanted the shoot to feel like Chicago, while also being warm and romantic. That’s not to say Chicago isn’t romantic—but, with it often living up to its nickname “The Windy City,” it certainly isn’t always warm.

Photographing near Lake Michigan and the Adler Planetarium in an area known as museum campus, Walker says, “We started in the evening so that the last hour of the session would be golden hour. It was a late spring here in Chicago, and the day had started really warm, but the temperature was dropping fast. Marquita was freezing and we were wrapping up the session. The sun had finally tucked enough behind the skyline where I could shoot wide open and still get some of the blue sky. I begged Marquita to ‘think warm thoughts’ and moved as quickly as I could.”

Dig into the Photo of the Day archives for more.