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 stopped us in our tracks this week.

This couple brought a couple of bubble guns to their pre-wedding shoot with Singapore-based photographer Tim Sim (of The Good Citizen). As they walked down a path on their way from one location to another, they decided to whip them out.

“My first thought was, How do I make an image that doesn’t look cliché with the bubbles?” Sim recalls. “Pointing the gun and shooting bubbles at each other or just smiling with someone firing bubbles at them would be nice but not stellar.”

But then it came to Sim: What if the bubbles acted as a transparent cloak for a kiss shot?

“It was certainly a challenge making this shot because the bubbles were incredibly erratic,” Sim admits. “The trick to it was to fire off indiscriminately with both the gun and my camera and after a short while, this image popped right up.”

Sim adds that he likes to photograph from a lower angle rather than head on for frames that have a certain level of detail because it helps make the composition a little more dynamic. “But I am careful not to make our couple unglamorous,” he stipulates, “because low shots tend to accentuate the jawline, which can cause unnecessary double-chins!”

Jacob Gordon got his workout in when he ventured to the Lancelin sand dunes outside of Perth in Western Australia with this couple for some portraits. They can be challenging to climb and descend, he says, but it’s worth it. Standing at a distance, he photographed this on an 85mm lens.

“The only obstacle was when I tried to give instructions to the couple as it was very windy,” Gordon recalls, “and being so far away from them, it was difficult for them to hear. So I made sure to give them plenty of instructions beforehand.”

Photographing them in silhouette, Gordon made sure you could see all of their limbs so that their figures were more visible, and he didn’t want any dark clouds directly behind them so that they could become the primary focus. “I had to constantly move my position so that there weren’t any clouds directly behind the couple,” he says. Gordon also upped the clarity on the image in post-production “to enhance the mood from the clouds and really show the drama of each cloud coming in at sunset.”

Nina and Arno of A Bear Photography in South Africa are wedding photographers, but they’ve also turned their lenses onto their kids.

This is their eldest daughter, Femke.

“She is 5 and knows exactly what she wants and doesn’t want,” they say. “One of her favorite things is dressing up as a princess, and what is a princess without a dress that spins out when you twirl? Femke calls them a draai rokkie in Afrikaans, which translates to a ‘turn dress.'” 

Femke wasn’t satisfied with the twirling size of the dresses she had for this shoot, so Nina reached out to a local designer, Helena the Label, to make a few for her that upped the twirling ante.

“This shot is a result of us driving to our favorite field in Potchefstroom and having Femke play model for us,” the couple says. “Growing up with photography parents, she is pretty used to us snapping pictures, and it does not take much for us to get her to relax. We think she looks exactly like a little forest nymph, and we love her so much.”

Traci Edwards of Adventure and Vow photographed this couple’s elopement in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state. “The couple chose this location, ultimately, because it would be private at sunset in the park, which wouldn’t be super busy, and it would offer an amazing view of the mountain without a super hefty hike, but still offer some adventure.”

The elopement took place in early summer, so they got to play around with the remaining snow fields in the park—even indulging in a snow ball fight and snowman-building.

Preferring to give her couples privacy during their vows, Edwards adds that doing so in a park like Mount Rainier is ideal because then she gets to take photos taken from far away with a long lens—compressing the majestic mountains into the frame.

“This particular night was one I seriously don’t think we will ever forget,” Edwards says. “Every 30 seconds, the sky was completely different. It would go from moody and no mountain to stunning light and colors with slight clouds to no clouds, full sun. It was stunning and for sure kept us on our toes with framing, exposure and just pure visual overload.”

Later in the evening, they were greeted by a meandering mountain goat “that seems to come out to every elopement we shoot here. It was seriously magical. I want to frame one of their photos for my own wall,” she adds with a laugh.

Mauricio D’Rugama teamed up with a couple of other photographers, makeup artist Claudia Blanquer, the floral design studio Salomon Estudio, linen company Butterfly Linens and gown designer Va de Blanco for this styled shoot in Mexico City that they called “TRES CUARTOS.” The shoot followed multiple conversations with the team about their vision as well as a moodboard for planning purposes.

They hired four models for the shoot, and each of them photographed one in a different room throughout the day. They switched up the gowns and the sets, which they built at 5 a.m. that day and photographed until 6:30 p.m.

“The main challenges was taking care of the gown because the floor was full of dust so she couldn’t move a lot on set,” says D’Rugama, who was working with window light streaming from camera right. “So I asked the model to turn her body that way so her face was lit.” He had just told the model that she had beautiful hands and that he wanted to play around with them in the shot. “Using the table and the back of the seat, gently, at a slow pace,” they experimented with placement until they landed on this pose.

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