Chicago-based commercial photographer Francois Robert has a unique way of seeing things that most of us don’t see. About 20 years ago, Francois and his Swiss designer brother, Jean, made us aware of anthropomorphic features in inanimate objects such as padlocks, mops, door knockers and light switches, and photographed these expressive faces and presented them in the book, “Face to Face.”

More recently, Francois has been captivated by another unusual subject — the human skeleton. Francois’s portfolio has long included photographs of animal skulls and he once spent weeks photographing skulls in the collection of the Field Museum of Natural History. But it wasn’t until he accidentally found a skeleton in a science-class locker that he bought at a sale of used school supplies that he began to contemplate the austere beauty of human bones. Arranging them into shapes five or six feet wide, he photographed them with a 4×5 Hasselblad hoisted on a boom.

From these photographs came the limited edition book “Stop the Violence,” crafted by designer Rick Valicenti. Bones arranged in the shapes of hand grenades, military tanks, bombs and fighter jets are presented with a transcript of the remarks of President Obama at the acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. Along with these symbols of war, Francois arranged the full alphabet out of human bones. The effect is austere, macabre, and unsettlingly beautiful.

San Francisco-based photographer Ryan Heffernan took these dramatic shots for a Japan Rags ad campaign. What looks like a freeze-frame photograph captured with split-second timing is actually a composite of three different stills.

After seeing Heffernan’s underwater photos on an online stock photo site, Agence Antidote asked him to fly to Paris to shoot a model in denim jeans plunging into clear water. The ads message is that Japan Rags jeans are made without excessive use of water. The shoot was done in a scuba facility with a viewing window, so hot lights could be directed into the tank. Heffernan worked inside the pool, using a 35mm camera protected by underwater housing.

While the selection of actual photographs was exhilarating to view, none was exactly quite right. Each time the model dived into the water the splash generated so many bubbles that sometimes the “product” – i.e., the jeans – could barely be seen. Agence Antidote chose the body pose it wanted from the different frames, and the final image is a composite of three different photographs that Heffernan and a retoucher merged into one awesomely natural scene.

Corbis doesn’t lack for products. With more than 100 million rights-managed photographs and illustrations and royalty-free images, Corbis continually faces the challenge of communicating the depth, breadth, diversity and quality of its vast collection and getting designers, art directors, publishers, editors and filmmakers to think of Corbis as their one-stop source for all stock image needs every single day.

That design brief quickly suggested to Studio Hinrichs the idea of creating a day-at-a-time calendar, featuring an event that happened that specific day in history and an image that tied the story together. This approach would allow Corbis to showcase the range of its many collections – celebrities, sports, fine art, science, architecture, cultural, outer space, historical, etc. –and give recipients a fascinating factoid for the day. What’s more, it addressed Corbis’ desire to make this program accessible across multiple platforms and to provide something that would be appreciated by everyone from top-level newspaper editors to wannabe designers still in school.

Corbis made one other request – it had to be translated into five languages for its customers worldwide. This meant that topics had to be of global interest and the text had to allow for translations into languages that sometimes required more space.

The concept for the Corbis 24/7/365 Calendar came easy, but the execution was anything but the case. Luckily, there was a wealth of images to choose from, but visually pacing the day-at-a-time calendar to represent different styles, collection categories and thematic ways of interpreting a topic required endless mixing-and-matching. Move one image or change one topic and a lot of shuffling had to occur. Delphine Hirasuna (yes, me) researched and wrote all the text. Brick Design collaborated on converting the calendar into digital formats for Web and mobile access. Meanwhile, the Corbis team double checked rights clearances and handled translations.

The result is a multiplatform program – a limited run desktop calendar, accessible online and on your mobile phone, and a poster/magazine ad insert that features all 365 images at a glance.

“When you take anything out of its context and put it against a white background, you see something different” explains photographer Andrew Zuckerman. “It forces all attention on the subject….It’s the absence of space and color…in the end, all you’re left with is the form and range of colors contained in the subject.”

Like his previous books “Creature” and “Wisdom,” Zuckerman’s latest book, “Birds,” is shot entirely against a white background. Using a Leaf Aptus 75S digital camera along with high-speed strobe lighting, Zuckerman caught details that would be impossible to see if the birds were photographed in their natural environment. Instead, Zuckerman set up a mobile studio, mostly at zoos, in four countries and coaxed 74 species of birds into the camera’s range. The result is microscopically crisp detail and dazzling nuances of color. To see more Zuckerman birds and a behind-the-scenes video of the photo shoot, visit Show-Off, a virtual nonprofit gallery conceived and curated by San Francisco/Newark, UK-based design firm Dowling Duncan.

As we in the United States celebrate Independence Day (aka Fourth of July), those of us in design communications can marvel at the freedoms that technology now allow. The living photograph here by Mole and Thomas was taken decades before the invention of Photoshop or even 35mm handheld cameras.

Around 1918, during the height of World War I patriotic fervor, Arthur S. Mole, a British-born photographer based in Zion, Illinois, joined forces with John D. Thomas, a choir director who liked to position choir members to form various religious icons-a talent that made him the perfect photo choreographer for Mole’s grandiose ideas. Together the two set about creating gigantic patriotic symbols by using military personnel essentially as “human pixels” and then photographing them.

The pair traveled from one U.S. military base to another and talked thousands of soldiers into posing for a “group shot.” It took at least a week to prepare for each photograph. First Mole and Thomas traced out the desired patriotic symbol on a ground-glass plate mounted on Mole’s 11-by-14 inch view camera. Then the shape was outlined on an open field using fabric staked into the ground. A sample section was then used to calculate how many models were needed to fill the whole shape and determine how many men had to wear dark uniforms or light uniforms.

Standing on a rickety 80-foot-high tower to get a birdseye view, Mole would then direct the gathered troops by using a megaphone, hand signals and a pointer flag. The set-up often took hours and the troops, wearing heavy wool dress uniforms, had to stand patiently in formation under the sweltering heat.

The photograph here, taken on the parade ground at the U.S. Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, Illinois, involved 10,000 cadets. In total, Mole and Thomas made 10 “living photographs,” including a 30,000-man U.S. Shield; an 18,000-person Lady Liberty; 25,000-person Liberty Bell complete with its signature crack in the middle; 19,000-man Uncle Sam, and 12,500-person American Eagle. Each photograph was processed into a silver gelatin print. The profits from the sale of prints were donated to help the war effort.

Happy Fourth of July.

There are assigned projects and self-generated projects that you do for the love and joy of it. Ten years in the making, The End (Is Just the Beginning) by photographer Rodney Smith is pure passion, wit and style …a total delight. The pleasure Smith took in producing this book comes through on every page. The 16×20 inch, 15 pound tome is hardbound on imported linen with a hand-printed silver gelatin photograph on its slipcase. The design by David Meredith and text by Walter Thomas beautifully mirror and play off the whimsy and elegance of Smith’s black-and-white photographs. Smith, whose editorial and commercial clients range from the New York Times to GQ, Starbucks to Visa, documents a surreal world with a photojournalist’s eye. The End was published by Smith in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, with each signed copy priced at $750.

theendofrodneysmith.com

Editor’s Note: Most assignments that come our way are driven by client objectives, with the subject, brand message, target audience and metrics for success defined in detailed design briefs. No matter how interesting, and sometimes lucrative, such projects can be, they are ultimately dictated by the client. At the end of the day, some of us like to unwind and reassert our creative freedom by dabbling in projects that captivate our interest and allow us to be as quirky and experimental as we like. Some of these self-generated projects are turned into published books and commercial products; others are only enjoyed by the artist and select friends. From time to time, we plan to feature some of these side projects, beginning with Terry Heffernan’s sole project.

Nationally renowned still life photographer Terry Heffernan has what one might consider a shoe fetish. More recently, his lust for famous soles has grown stronger.

Heffernan says it all began while touring the storage area at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, when he was shooting there on assignment. “On an old green metal filing cabinet, I saw a pair of well-worn black leather cleats with a yellow ID tag tied onto the lace,” he recalls. “I asked what that was about and was told the shoes belonged to Shoeless Joe Jackson, accused in the Black Sox Scandal of conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series. Seeing the dirt still on the cleats actually raised the hair on my arms; it was a visceral reaction. I just had to shoot it.”

For Heffernan, soles are a window onto the human soul. “To me, shoes are an extension of the wearer’s personality. Over time they take on the shape of the person’s foot, the body form. They tell you something about the person’s taste and style, interests and activities, energy level, posture and how they walk, nervous habits, and how they see themselves. They are less self-conscious than clothes, so in many ways they are more revealing.”

In recent years, Heffernan has managed to photograph the shoes of more than 40 famous people, mostly artists and athletes, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Magic Johnson, and Dusty Baker. He feels he recently hit the jackpot when his friend musician Jimmy Dillon put him in touch with the International Kids Alliance Network, or IKAN, a Michigan charity that mentors kids. As a memento, IKAN has asked famous mentors to autograph and donate a pair of their shoes to inspire the kids. IKAN magnanimously allowed Heffernan to borrow and shoot the entire collection. But, of course, Heffernan is hungry for more famous soles. “It would be so cool to photograph the shoes of Mother Teresa, Ansel Adams, David Hockney, Neil Armstrong…or Dorothy’s ruby slippers,” he says wistfully. Eventually, Heffernan hopes to produce a published book of famous soles, but for his own pleasure, he created a prototype and had a single copy produced by a print on demand service. He happily shows it off to visitors to his studio and appeals to friends to let him know if they know any famous people who would let him shoot their shoes. We said we’d ask. If you can help, you can reach him through his website www.heffernanfilms.com.

The photographs tell the whole story in this advertising campaign for the Sydney International Food Festival, sponsored by The Sydney Morning Herald, in Australia. The national flags represent the countries participating in the event’s World Chef Showcase Weekend (October 9-11) and are made up of ingredients and/or dishes for which each region is known. The promotion was created by WHYBIN/TBWA in Sydney, with Garry Horner as executive creative director and Trish Heagerty as food stylist.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence that digital photography has come of age is Kodak’s announcement last week that it will no longer manufacture Kodachrome film. Certainly, we understand, but to let this product disappear without acknowledgement would be to ignore how much it single-handedly transformed commercial photography and corporate communications. The introduction of 35mm Kodachrome in 1936 made it possible to capture scenes in color. Location photographers used Kodachrome to shoot everything from manufacturing facilities for annual reports and Olympic athletics for sports magazines to soldiers wading through rice paddies in Vietnam – all in vibrant color. For decades, the 2×2 cardboard sleeves that held these color slides were scattered around every design studio and spread out on light tables for better viewing. Today even seasoned photographers who swore only a few years ago that they would never give up their Kodachrome now happily extol the advantages of shooting digitally. But like the passing of an aged loved one, we reflect fondly and sadly on the impact that Kodachrome had on our lives. So, all rise, bow your heads and sing a chorus of Paul Simon’s “Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away” for old time’s sake.