“I don’t have to travel far,” he said. “Any time I find a parking lot with a block-long view, there’s a site.”

Image As links to his Flickr page spread virally this year, some 20 million views have been recorded. Credit... Michael Paul Smith

Mr. Smith estimates by eye the proper distance of his sets from their outdoor backdrops. “It’s all by trial and error,” he said, “moving a set around, watching how shadows fall.” He spends about an hour on each shoot, which usually produces two or three usable photos. (He has done about 200 shoots.)

Mr. Smith describes his photos as stories. Each is a self-contained miniature play, a window into his memories and imagination. A nondescript edifice that he noticed while scouting locations became the “Research Building.” The 1958 Chrysler model he photographed in the nearby “parking lot” might belong to the head of a space program project.

That executive is nowhere to be seen. Elgin Park is full of shiny American cars from the ’40s to the mid-’60s, but there’s not a driver or pedestrian in sight. The omission is deliberate.

“I don’t put people in my photos,” Mr. Smith said. “I want viewers to put themselves into the scenes. I’m creating a mood, something familiar in the viewer’s mind.” While no people are visible in the photos, he has managed to give Elgin Park a sense of humanity, as if at any moment someone will step out of a store and drive away in a car.

The more ways he rearranged his sets, and the more photos he posted on Flickr, the more Mr. Smith could feel a town was emerging. “One day, it just hit me: this is ‘Elgin Park,’” he said. “I didn’t know where that came from.”

Driving Mr. Smith’s creation of Elgin Park were his memories of Sewickley, Pa., a real steel-mill town a few miles north of Pittsburgh. He spent his first 17 years there, and it still holds his heart. “Elgin Park is not an exact re-creation of Sewickley,” he explained, “but it does capture the mood of my memories.”