As we head into the heady summer months, it helps to keep a little spring in your step. Dean Davis, a Spokane, Wash.-based commercial photographer, has taken such advice to extremes in this colorful image.

"Spring Man" was originally created as part of a series to illustrate a capabilities brochure for Spokane-based ICM Asset Management. Davis was hired to work with West Public Relations and a local design firm, Klundt-Hosmer Design, to provide a visual representation of a phrase used in the company's brochure: "The battle may go to the strong, and the race to the swift."

To complete the image the team envisioned, Davis set off on the literal route to find industrial-strength springs, eventually finding two specimens from Pohl Spring Works in Spokane. After consulting with a cobbler at a real bootmaking facility...