The camera has imaged the brightness range within the capabilities of its sensor, and the final image has no doubt been tweaked digitally, before the artist copied the image to paper. The contrast range of the paper is vastly less than that of the subject, and the transfer function used to create the image on the paper is that of the photographic system. The result is not realistic, the human eye processes the range of brightness seen very differently. Light and shade are the province of the real artist. An artists ability to convey wide variations of brightness on a canvas make a simple camera look pathetic. An artist does this in a manner that looks realistic. Photographically we do have HDR techniques, but they look contrived. Look at the work of Vermeer to see how he builds a level of realism. Compared to Girl with Pearl Earring I would rate the photorealistic image in the OP's link as inferior. Super real and photo-real art have been with us for ages. They do become a little tiresome. As noted above, the single most important reason artists of old didn't paint like this is because they looked at the subject with their eyes. The artist in the OP didn't. He may well have never seen the girl in the picture. What he has drawn is a picture of a photograph, not a picture of a girl. If he was not given the photograph, but was presented with the girl in the