A Look at How Michael Paul Smith Creates Historical Photos with Incredibly Detailed Models

Here’s a fascinating video about how photographer Michael Paul Smith creates and photographs Elgin Park, a 20th century town created through miniature 1/24th-scale models. Smith creates incredibly realistic photos by capturing the detailed dioramas with an ordinary compact camera, and his images have gone viral in recent years on the Internet (the project has over 70 million views on Flickr).

The video was created by Animal, which will soon be publishing Smith’s photo book on this project.

Everything in each of Smith’s scenes was made by hand — well, everything except the 1/24th-scale diecast car models. Animal wanted to give the world a glimpse of the brilliant mind behind the images, so the publishing group interviewed Smith and captured some behind-the-scenes footage of projects coming together.

Here are some recent behind-the-scenes photos and the resulting images of Elgin Park:

15524588444_7b8604b659_z

15928001828_9d95dac13d_z

12779868103_0231a297ba_z

12687785275_5ffd38610d_z

14594534730_444e751be9_z

14773564133_58d001d5c6_z

14519305396_f0573db245_z

14490018480_b7b5dd8943_z

12346624025_f9ba624503_z

11995098843_43b8149186_z

14426349429_92372ac13e_z

14575054215_87cd00e41a_z

13894238056_b6a4850a93_z

13823117655_b07be314c0_z

11650475646_f5d5f832a5_z

11594728873_44d6df0f95_z

Head on over to Smith’s Photostream on Flickr to see more of his amazing work. You can also preorder the Elgin Park photo book now for $35 — it contains a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at Smith’s work.


Image credits: Photographs by Michael Paul Smith and used with permission

Discussion