The same pix from a different POV
Check out this website (scroll down for the photos): http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm. The author gives some interesting background info to the story.
I remember seeing a book about this case years ago, when I was quite young, and being disappointed in the "fairy pictures". I was all excited at the thought of a "true" fairytale, but even then, the "fairies" seemed too much like drawings to me. Besides, as someone who's always been interested in the history of fashion, in the fourth photo, taken in 1920, it's amazing how the fairy offering the flower to Elsie is the height of 1920s fashion: bobbed hair, stylishly flat-chested figure, and a dress (under the gauze) that would have fit right in at the time! In the "authentic" sun-bath photo, the middle "fairy" looks semi-believable (mostly because she's so blurry), but the one on the right once again looks like a cut-out illustration. I'm not going to argue with anyone who believes in fairies (apparently Iceland, an otherwise hard-headed nation, is full of people who do!), but if you offer the Cottingley photos as evidence, I must confess I'm disappointed by your low standards...