Fake Miniatures and Tiny People
In response to my post on miniature cities, my friend Cosmo Wenman points me to another version of the same artistic impulse:
That article mentioned the appeal of tilt-shift photography: there are several flickr photo sets devoted to taking photos of real cityscapes and photoshopping them to look like scale models. The photoshopping reproduces what an antique tilting bellows/accordian type camera would do: it removes perspective distortion. That effect makes it looks like it was taken up close. Oversaturating the colors makes it look artificial.
Here are some good ones:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/miwo76/120735433/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcsixth/106792657/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnw/111587843/
And here's a delightful website devoted to "Little hand-painted people, left in London to fend for themselves." (Via CNet's Esoterica blog.)