Photo-Realism and Nausea

Of all the phrases that made me sick to my stomach, a client asking for "photorealism" was one of the most potent nausea producers.   Why ?  Because photo realism is a style of painting, and not particularly applicable to a judgment about whether an image looks real or not.  An image looks real (when created with artificial means, e.g. crayons, computers, spit, etc) when it is art directed and integrated into its medium to look real, not because of any inherent "photo realism".

Here is one of my favorite images made with Photorealistic Renderman, hopefully it does not look even the least bit "photoreal" to you.