From commercial advertising images to fantastic album covers, photographer Glen Wexler has never met an idea he couldn't reproduce with his arsenal of high-tech digital tools.

His portfolio could be housed in a Mack truck, with elephants in tutus dancing on the top. Inside, tuxedoed cows would parachute away from erupting volcanoes while winged men would soar gracefully above.

Jet skis would race against wasps. Neckties would spontaneously catch on fire, and kissing couples would suddenly be frozen solid, with icicles hanging from their faces. Heavy metal bands would...

Three Studio Photographers Share Their Solutions to Creative Quandaries

Even in the controlled environment of the studio, photographers face all manner of challenges in completing the assignments that clients and agencies dream up. The desired sets, subjects, props, angles, lighting and other effects require technical skill and creative versatility, as well as mental, and sometimes physical, ingenuity. Here, three successful studio photographers share the problem-solving methods behind some of their most compelling images, as selected by PhotoMedia staff.

Find out how this digital photography pioneer claw his way to the top of the greeting card industry with his inventive, whimsical and furry animal creations.

His chickens don't just cross the road, they blast along it as speed-demon motorcycle mamas, leaving a trail of feathers behind their black leather. A demure white rabbit shoots skyward on a red pogo stick. A cat can water-ski, ride a bicycle and, yes, even wield a chainsaw or a whip (the latter as a dominatrix in tall black boots and a merry-widow corset).

Sound kinky and silly, and impossible to shoot? Welcome to the animal antics world of John Lund (johnlund.com), a studio photographer and digital imaging pioneer whose zany creations have spawned an empire of highly successful greeting cards, books, calendars, posters and gift merchandise such as mugs, figurines, frames, magnets, jigsaw puzzles and stationery...

Gerald Bybee continues to shake up the studio world with his beautiful and eerie images.

Like photo-cubism, the genre he invented, Gerald Bybee has many facets. He's not totally visible from any one side. A glimpse of his self-portrait below reveals one aspect, but then the image shifts. He seems not totally in one space, not completely in another.Or maybe he is, and it's your own perspective that's skewed.

Consider some facts about Bybee: He has a client list to die for. Ad agencies and magazines count on him for images that are odd, yet realistic, and sometimes shocking. He's a burgeoning artist. He's the kind of guy who works all night to meet a deadline, meticulously piecing together images. He's a family man who appreciates...

Creating space is a challenge every studio photographer ultimately must face. Seattle's Amy Andersen and Jonathan Ross knew the time had come two years ago, as they gazed around the tiny windowless studio they had come to call "the bomb shelter."

After spending years building a client base and socking away earnings from ever-larger assignments, Andersen Ross Photography had a hefty sum in the bank, and the husband-and-wife photography team knew they wanted to spend it on a bigger studio. They settled on a few simple requirements.

They wanted to find a studio that was sunny yet cavernous. It had to be fabulous yet affordable, with room to grow...

Whether you're perusing the 53 dreamlike models and dancers in his latest photo book, The Apparitions, or marveling at the blur of a snarling attack dog in a recent ad he shot for Sony Playstation, there's no denying that R. J. Muna's photos make the pulse quicken. Less clear is how his wispy images gather so much force from such ethereal foundations.

In Muna's latest book, says photographer Owen Edwards, "What Muna wanted to track down wasn't just the spirits that flit through our dreams, both waking and sleeping, but whatever it was that brought them up from the depths."

Throughout his career, says Edwards, "Muna has created photographic versions of these invented glimpses...

At the end of a long, dark hallway, he opens the doorway of L.A.'s most famous feather prop house. Through a haze of feather dust, Morgan sees workers breathing through dust masks as they fashion angel wings of every shape and size. He picks out a few sets of small wings, then heads back to his studio, where his staff is fashioning tiny harnesses to hang hired pigs from his ceiling.
It's a long way to go to make something as mundane as an ad client's product—a door—look interesting. And the end result will look only subtly different had someone spent an afternoon fiddling with Photoshop.
 But the image Morgan creates in the camera, and the story behind it, will last a lifetime.

The world of studio photography has evolved rapidly since the advent of the digital age. From the digital stock CDs of the 1980s to the portfolio websites and digital editing tools of the 1990s to the photography megaportals of 2000 and beyond, the creative and collaborative opportunities offered by computing...