Hi,

Does anybody know where I can buy the miniature figurines which are often used in business concept type shots (businessmen shaking hands etc etc).

I've had a search on the net but can't find anywhere, but there's got to be a supplier somewhere!

Thanks for any help given... 
 

Make them yourself.

I've picked them up at hobby stores that have model train accessories. They come is different sizes to match the different train sizes/scales. Or, Google "model train people" and you will get lots of sites.

http://www.hobbymasters.com/hogaugemodeltrainpeopleandanimals.aspx

I've admired this photographer's work with miniatures for a long time - http://squint-pictures.myshopify.com/

I remember reading somewhere that the problem with these tiny plastic figurines is that the most well known brands have their designs copyrighted (The images can be sold as editorial only). I could be wrong tho, but I still recall that that was preventing me buying plastic figurines and shooting them for microstock purposes.

There are of course some more obscure brands of small people, but I'm not sure their quality is high enough for photo purposes.

The obscure brands might lead to rejections, too.  Today I discovered IS had deactivated one of my photos for copyright infringement, because they thought the classic microphone I used was a specific brand.  Wrong.  It was a cheap-o Chinese microphone I bought solely to use as a prop.  I'm not about to buy a top-of-line, brand-name microphone for a microstock photo shoot!  If they had bothered to look closely enough, they would have seen the difference between the two microphones.  Just count the slats.  5 doesn't equal 7, but then again...as I said in another thread, it's 1984 at IS and 1+1 no longer =2.