The folks over at NPR have a great article on Photorealism.
"Can you guess which one is a photo and which one is a painting?
Quartet by Ralph Goings
If you're going to do a painting that looks exactly like a photo, why even paint it? When asked this question in a written Q & A, photorealist painter and octogenarian Ralph Goings responded, "What I'm about is making paintings, and my camera is one of the tools I use. It's the artist's job to take the painting beyond the photograph."
Keep reading the entire article here.