Bay Area photographers Greg Lorenz and Kim Avelar specialize in tricking the eye, in creating images that appear to be real but couldn't possibly exist. In their world, woodpeckers have drill bits for beaks; barracudas cruise the deep with submarine propellers; plants spread solar panels instead of leaves.

And clouds are launched with just a brushstroke and a stepladder.

Although this whimsical scene looks like a clever trick of perspective, it's actually a carefully constructed composite image – a specialty of the husband-and-wife duo. The background image of field and sky was taken on a road trip in Montana. The ladder and model were shot later, using the same 24mm lens under similar outdoor lighting conditions, and merged with the first image via Photoshop...

After spending a large part of his career in Southeast Asia, photojournalist Richard Vogel thought he had seen every type of Buddha statue as he covered various religious shrines and festivals for the Associated Press. Until he saw this one in 1996.

While on a two-year stint in Thailand, Vogel came across this uncharacteristic Buddha representation in a well-hidden part of Bangkok. "I had no idea what that Buddha statue looked like and was very surprised when I saw it," he recalls. "It had these giant feet, which was very unusual, and people were praying and putting gold leaf on it."

Vogel, who prefers to be "as a fly on the wall," snapped this quiet image of a man praying at the Buddha’s heel and left him undisturbed. Later, Vogel transmitted the image to the AP wire, where it was sent worldwide...

This image of a northern pygmy owl calling to its mate from a woodpecker hole in a quaking aspen tree took just a fraction of a second to make.

For wildlife photographer Paul Bannick, however, it took days of careful tracking, observation of avian behavior and infinite patience to capture the moment. After traipsing through the still-snowy woods last spring in the south-central Washington Cascades, he heard an owl call, so he gave a response. Then a second owl joined in.

"After that, I listened and watched, not wanting to disturb the couple," he recalls.

After observing the pair for a few days, Bannick saw a fist-size female fly into a hole made by a hairy woodpecker, indicating acceptance of the cavity as a new nest...

San Francisco is a city built on an active fault zone and is famous for having a decidedly off-kilter subculture. It’s only natural, then, that the city’s unstable beauty should be captured perfectly by a jiggly dessert. Bay Area artist and photographer Liz Hickok may have cornered the market on a truly unique artistic pursuit: gelatin sculpting. Always interested in maps and models, Hickok set about building a scale model of the city three years ago, while she was pursuing a master’s degree in fine arts at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. After experimenting with various media to form buildings, she found them all either too difficult or too expensive.

"I’m a bit of a 'foodie' and love sweets,” she says. "And I’ve always been attracted to color and light, so I sort of stumbled on the idea of Jell-O...

Spring is definitely in the air for this happy couple. Their costumes may seem unusual, but their eternal, happy pursuit is universally recognizable. This image, by Portland, Ore., photographer Andy Batt, was made for the Oregon Ballet Theatre (OBT) to promote the troupe's fall 2005 performance of the ballet "Angelo,” by choreographer Julia Adam.

The ballet, an interpretation of the famous "All the world's a stage” soliloquy from Shakespeare's "As You Like It,” depicts seven stages of a man's life. In this OBT production, all of the life stages were designed around the same set piece: the trunk of a tree.

To capture the feeling of the drama, Batt chose to shoot the dancers outdoors, using a real tree at Council Crest Park, just west of Portland...

After several articles about the overheated antics and egos of studio shoots, we thought we'd end this issue with an idyllic scene of natural splendor: Claire Curran's "Maple Leaves in Workman Creek," shot in Arizona's rugged Sierra Ancha Mountains.
"Actually, it's one of the filthiest creeks I've ever seen," Curran says. "Each time I go there, I have to do a major sweep of all the beer cans and plastic bags lying around."
So much for idyll...

What do you get when you mix together a group of modern ballet dancers, a barren landscape and a freelance photographer who doesn't take himself too seriously? If that photographer is the itinerant Albert Normandin, the answer is "Jump," an image that sums up his kinetic style and love of spontaneity.

The shot was taken in August 2000 ("It seems like so long ago," Normandin says) outside of Las Vegas. "We just went out to the desert, and I let them jump around and shot about 150 rolls," he says. "I like to work that way, just let them go with it...

Though looks can't kill, this one just might. It's a close-up of the eye of Arothron mappa, also known as the scribbled pufferfish. It's hardly a man-eater, but don't try to turn it into sushi: Its flesh contains a neurotoxin that can be deadly.

The image was shot at night by photographer Murray S. Kaufman, while the pufferfish was dozing in a reef in the Sulawesi Sea. Diving off Mabul Island, near the southeast coast of Malaysian Borneo, Kaufman noticed the fish because it was a juvenile and, therefore, more colorful than the adult kind. "I got about a foot away from it when I snapped the picture," he says. "Usually you get one strobe shot and they take off, but I was able to get a few images."...