I really really love both Outer Wilds and the DLC and think the reddit community, when asked, does a great job of providing advice or tips for specific situations without revealing too much.
Such a great book! I thought the whole section on why we age was compelling. The idea that nature can select for mutations which may be beneficial earlier on but have harmful effects after a given time period was new to me.
I strongly recommend both of these books. The Soul of an Octopus is more anecdotal and Other Minds is more academic; in sum they offer not just a fascinating picture of octopuses, but a larger discussion on consciousness and foreign intelligence.
Photographs are inherently multiple; a single print might be all that exists, but the artist is at least able to make more.
Comparing photographs and prints, Picasso's "La Femme Qui Pleure I" sold for $5.1M[0], while the most paid for a photograph appears to be $4.3M, for Rhein II by Andreas Gursky[1].
I conclude from this that it's the singularity of paintings, rather than their editorial and subjective quality, that is responsible for the difference in price.
Paintings can be reproduced, both manually and automatically. Prints used to be easy to spot because of color quality and because they were perfectly flat, but that has become a lot harder with the advent of 3D printers that can layer ink and even craquelure (visually). See for example https://shop.ariustechnology.com/collections/all-products.
I think it’s more a matter of ‘snobbiness’ that determines prices that get paid.
You speak-write with such certainty that I'm sure you have an argument in your mind, but it didn't come across. I feel like some sentences were erased from your comment.
Supply and Demand.
A valuable photo has higher supply so each copy is worth less. A valuable concrete illustration has supply of 1, even if the artist has cranked out many similar works.
I agree with the 'editorial' aspect of this comment.
The illustrator is able to draw the defining characteristics of the plant/subject and leave out what is not important. Things like veins or leaf structure to define the genus are incredibly important.
The editorial nature can bring that forward. With a picture, it is hard for a lay person to tell what details are classifying/important.
The fundamental reason is that photography is based on a single individual specimen, whereas illustration can be based on hundreds or thousands of specimens. Thus, the illustrator can draw attention to the defining characteristics and ignore the "noise".
> The article mentions that illustration is a lot better than photography
Photography is just not enough. Botanical illustration puts all required details, and only those, together in the same place.
1-Can show all the plants in the same family in the same figure.
2-Can link features that never appear at the same time (like winter buds, fall fruits, summer flowers and associated fauna and funghia),
3-Can play with the scale showing features of much different sizes at similar scale (i.e tricolpate pollen, the shape of the aperture in anthers, and silhouette of the whole tree).
4-Will show the required details, but not more. A photo will show five plants mixed in the same picture so is often very confuse for an untrained eye to understand "what" is from "who". Photos lead often to "frankenplants" and it takes a lot of experience to disclose it, and this is a problem [1].
5-Will be uniform in design. Not distracting light or cropped leaves in photos. Not backgrounds that vary among figures.
6-Will take care of correct hues and color variations. Cheap caperas distroy red hues for example. Subtle variations are notoriously difficult to reproduce. Colors will be oversaturated and will change a lot when taken in different hours of the day. Similar species will appear darker and its mimic will appear lighter. In the end you have a very confuse picture.
[1] This can seem just pedantry until you realize that your children are looking at a photo showing the fruits of an edible species, tagged as "delicious as raw berries and green parts can be used in salads" but mixed with leaves of a second species growing in the background that is poisonous (and there is not a single warn about it at sight). Internet is full of those mistakes.
Wikipedia blurb that has no citation but makes sense:
"The development of photographic plates has not made illustration obsolete, despite the improvements in reproducing photographs in printed materials. A botanical illustrator is able to create a compromise of accuracy, an idealized image from several specimens, and the inclusion of the face and reverse of the features such as leaves. Additionally, details of sections can be given at a magnified scale and included around the margins around the image."
> A botanical illustrator is able to create a compromise of accuracy, an idealized image from several specimens
This is a real advantage of illustration, assuming the illustrator has put in their research.
> and the inclusion of the face and reverse of the features such as leaves. Additionally, details of sections can be given at a magnified scale and included around the margins around the image.
This is spurious; photos of the face and reverse of a leaf are no different from illustrations of the face and reverse of a leaf in terms of what it's possible to include in an image, and obviously the same goes for marginalia. You can composite multiple photos on one page just as easily as you can draw multiple things on one page.
Illustration, by its nature, has the ability to schematize and make diagrammatic our experience of the world on multiple, concurrent levels, in an image or set of images. Using it, you can essentially overlay information about what we understand about a given object not present in a photograph of a said object.
The most obvious example that comes to mind for botanical illustration is the use of cross sections to display the various structures and mechanisms of a plant in a way that is readily interpretable.
I sometimes want to find out what species a spider or plant is when I am hiking. Generally I find it easier to identify from an illustration than photos. It seems the illustration emphasizes the main points whereas photos aren’t as clear.
You have to understand how something works to be able to depict it properly in an illustration. Understanding is the key to explain anything to other people. An illustrated cross section can teach the complexity of natural or engineered objects in a way that photography just can't.
The opposite is true; understanding how something works usually interferes with your ability to draw it accurately. People want to draw the truth they know rather than the image they see.
And contrast idiot savants who are able to draw images perfectly, while no one believes they need to understand how whatever they're drawing works.
That started as a good counterpoint. But you need to understand how something works to be able to draw a cross-section from scratch. It represents a truth that is not otherwise visible. Even to draw a basic diagram, you must understand what is at stake. What an idiot savant draws or paints, no matter how realistic, is a very different job.
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