Photorealism
The technique of creating in photorealism, which is what this is, has been around since at least the seventies. I've seen others, as have a lot of us, but we often didn't know what we were looking at because the illustrator hadn't made a big deal of it. Photorealism is painstaking to accomplish, requiring a sharp eye for detail and no small amount of dedication to accuracy. Not everyone can do it and fewer are willing to try. Granted, it does mean working directly from a photo and it is this aspect that has some people claiming that it really isn't "art" but merely copying.
