Have you seen our most recent Photos of the Day on social media? Each day on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, we feature a wedding photo or portrait that strikes us as one of the most interesting in its genre, and we ask the creatives behind the photos to detail the image’s backstory and their technical approach. Here’s what caught our attention this week.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Photographers Andreja and Zdravko of In Photo Video & Design got the chance to photograph a couple in Crikvenica, a beautiful city in Croatia on the Adriatic coast. The weather was perfect, with a clear sky and plenty of sun, but they did find themselves indoors in less-than-desirable rooms—including this one, where the bride was getting ready.

[Read: 9 Ways to Balance Natural Light and Dark Shadows Before a Wedding Ceremony]

Some sun was peeking in through the windows, however, so the photographers could do a little problem-solving. They asked the bride to stand near the windows, whose shutters they angled to create interesting shadows on her face and figure. Exposing for the light, they enshrouded the rest of the room in darkness.

[Read: The Art of Photographing with Natural Light]

The View from Below

Kelli Wilke says she tries to get out of her comfort zone when she’s shooting sessions with couples. In the case of this photo, that happened quite literally—she laid down on a dock and photographed a couple kissing from below.

“One thing I think that is important for photographers to do—and I constantly have to remind myself this—is to look at every situation from multiple angles: high, low and even come from the other side,” Wilke advises. “Test and check. Often the obvious angle isn’t always the best, and I’m constantly surprised when I take the time to really work a scene.”

Sunlight and Haze

Cynthia and Samantha got married earlier this month in at a barn in New York, where they hired an open-fire caterer to feed their 14-person wedding. The smoke from the open fire created an atmospheric haze, including around a farm table sitting below a large willow tree.

Photographer Caitlinn Ramsden of The Ramsdens went to photograph details at the table when she noticed the sunlight cutting through the haze—”basically every photographer’s dream,” she says. “I literally ran and asked the couple if I could steal them away from their cocktail hour and asked them to sit right in the space of shadow in the sunlit smoke.” Ramsden made sure the couple’s faces were in shadow, then exposed for the shadows to illuminate their expressions and the scene around them.

A Couple’s Beautiful Silence

For a couple’s early-morning portrait session, Elena Lazuli aimed to capture their true connection. They had been joking around and laughing with each other, but Lazuli also observed quiet unspoken love between them too.

“There was something in their silence and how they were able to forget all around them and just be with each other, in that moment,” says the Serbia-based photographer. Eventually, she captured what she describes as “her little smile and the sparkling of her eyes that tells him a thousand words more than just ‘I love you,’ and his attitude that is showing her that she can trust him with her feelings—just silently saying, ‘I’m the one.'”

Backlight and Bokeh (with a Little Light Leak)

The lighting conditions had been a bit harsh for The Hendrys in Joshua Tree’s Hidden Valley, where they were photographing a couple’s portrait session—but nothing that some backlighting couldn’t fix.

“The sun was almost dipping behind the hills in the distance, so we made use of the backlighting to capture some flares and light leaks to add those extra effects and give the image an additional bit of warmth,” the photographers say. They held up a prism to help pop those colors, with a little additional accentuation in post-production.

They cranked their exposure to make sure that the couple was properly exposed, and they used an old 24mm tilt-shift lens to “centralize the focus on the couple and bokeh out some of the ground. Despite its age and the fact it has been in our possession for almost 10 years, it’s been one of our most favorite lenses to use of late!”

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