Using model cars from the 1950s and '60s, a few handmade sets and his camera, Michael Paul Smith has created a town, Elgin Park, that exists only in photographs. (Courtesy of Michael Paul Smith)
The images on the Flickr slide show serve up a comforting slice of mid-20th-century Americana: the local banker's slinky '56 Lincoln Premiere reflects the summer sun outside the hardware store on Main Street. A spit-shined Divco truck delivers fresh milk from the Borden dairy. On the town's outskirts, where hot-rodders use the county road as a drag strip, a custom '55 Ford gets a set of loud pipes at a one-bay speed shop.
The memories, and the images on the Flickr photo-sharing site, belong to Michael Paul Smith. They've made his fictional town of Elgin Park a virtual tourist destination, attracting about 20 million views since January.
What has captivated online visitors are photos of model cars from Smith's collection, arranged in scale-model sets that look improbably lifelike, down to the period-correct signs, glints of sunshine and the natural weathering of storefronts.
Smith, of Winchester, Mass., posted his first Elgin Park images about two years ago. For some time, they were attracting about 200 views a day, but the images began to spread virally in January. At times, daily page views approach 750,000, Smith says.
Smith, 60, says he was just looking for something fun to do with his collection of 1/24-scale die-cast car and truck models -- some 300 altogether, mostly purchased from the Danbury Mint for $100 or more over the last 20 years.
How he does it
- Smith says that his only use of Adobe Photoshop is to apply filters that give some photos an older look to match the quality of color film available during the decades he portrays. His photography tools are relatively low-tech -- a 6-megapixel Sony digital camera and an 11-year-old Apple eMac.
Recreating his boyhood memories seemed a good place to start. Smith scratch-built a dozen or so scale-model buildings, which he mixes and matches to create many different sets. These he populates with his cars, carefully choosing the appropriate models based on what he calls "the dialogue they have with each other."
He photographs his sets against outdoor backdrops in and around Winchester, blending the backgrounds -- distant buildings, trees, utility lines -- into the frames. "I don't have to travel far," he says. "Any time I find a parking lot with a block-long view, there's a site."
Smith estimates by eye the proper distance of his sets from their outdoor backdrops. "It's all by trial and error," he says, "moving a set around, watching how shadows fall."
While Elgin Park is full of shiny American cars from the '40s to the mid-'60s, there's not a driver or pedestrian in sight. The omission is deliberate.
"I don't put people in my photos," Smith says. "I want viewers to put themselves into the scenes. I'm creating a mood, something familiar in the viewer's mind."
Michael Paul Smith and the tools of his town at his home in Winchester, Mass. (Gretchen Ertl / New York Times News Service)
Although drawn to American cars of the '30s to the '60s, Smith does not call himself a car buff. "As a teenager, I was a car enthusiast for the design, not so much the horsepower," he says.
He fondly remembers his first model car, though, an AMT three-in-one plastic kit his father gave him for his 12th birthday. It was a 1963 Chevy Impala with working headlights.
Smith has stopped buying model cars, he says, but Elgin Park still has more stories to tell. An old unused railroad spur that he sees on his daily train commute has inspired his next set. "I've already purchased inexpensive, correct-scale boxcars," he says. He's looking forward to choosing just the right cars to complete the scene.
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