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. View some of the eye-catching portraits and photos that caught our attention this week and read the backstories on the how they were created.

Valerie Fernandez is working on a project that would combine couples underwater photography and ocean wildlife conservation, and to start, she’s learning the ropes to working with couples under the surface. “This particular day we were shooting in the open ocean and there was a lot of wildlife around us,” Fernandez recalls of this couples session. “While this was mesmerizing, it also created a thrill, a tension throughout the shoot that I believe made the images even more vivid.”

Inspired by different kinds of dance and music videos as she’s photographing, Fernandez discovered that shooting underwater means letting go of a lot of control. When they’re free diving without oxygen equipment, she needs to get the shot in 30 to 45 seconds. In that time, Fernandez needs to carry herself physically underwater what looking for light and composition knowing that her camera’s underwater case limits her access to her settings.

[Read: How To Survive an Underwater Wedding]

“My models need to handle themselves while at the same time reaching out for each other, communicating blindly, solely relying on touch, instinct and feelings. It takes a lot of letting go of our usual ways,” Fernandez notes. “It’s also extremely freeing, powerful and beautiful. We can’t communicate with each other once we’re under, so the trust needs to be strong, the session needs to happen in a relaxed and comfortable manner, and the challenges need to be handled calmly.”

Fernandez says working with these two was therapeutic as well; they were going through “something extremely difficult personally,” she says, “and the way they held on to each other and communicated strength, comfort and courage to one another made me want to capture a photo exuding their hope, resilience, absolute faith and love rising up.”

Just after touching up her makeup in her suite, the bride emerged for portraits with photographer Pedro Olvera. He had discovered this white hallway, which he knew would be a great source of ambient light.

[Read: How to Master Aperture and Depth-of-Field (and Break Camera Habits)]

He originally began taking photos inside the hall himself, but soon Olvera realized a whole new mood once he backed up and out into the surrounding night. “This blew my mind,” he says.

Photographer Goran Primorac knew ahead of this couple’s photo session that Kristina loved boho, “so I thought the best location would be in mountains.” He decided on Blidinje Jezero, a nature park in Bosnia and Herzegovina, “because there are so many amazing locations without people.”

[Read: A Photographer’s Guide to Creating All-Day Elopement Packages]

Primorac packed up his car with a bunch of materials and hit the road with the couple, stopping a few times along the way. “To be honest, I had help from both of them with this setup because the wind was picking up,” he says, “so they helped me put it all together.”

In mountains located an hour outside downtown Santiago, Chile, Myriam Ménard was photographing these two models at sunset. While they’re not a real couple, she notes, “I felt they had such an amazing connection that I played a lot pushing them to explore intimacy, and this is the result! They both said that it was magical and were heartbroken when we had to separate back in Santiago.”

London wedding photographer Andy Tyler says he loves a photo that doesn’t require much explanation, if any at all, from the various visual cues hidden in plain sight. Clearly, this was an Indian wedding that he captured in London, taken during the groom’s entrance called the baraat.

[Read: 15 Must-Capture Photo Ops at Indian Weddings]

The procession began around the corner from the hotel where the wedding was to take place. They were equipped with colorful smoke grenades, an aesthetic choice from the groom to make the moment more memorable.

“I thought I would go across the street to capture the whole procession against the backdrop of the buildings, rather than being up close to the groom himself,” Tyler says. “As luck would have it, a double-decker red bus pulled up to a bus stop, and the colors of the Ribena ad happened to match those of the smoke grenades. I think the photo would still have been good if the bus hadn’t been there, but its timely arrival really gave the shot an obvious London feel and elevated it to the next level.”

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