Similarities and difference between paintings are photographs?
Even though this sounds like a homework question, I take a stab. To me, as far as representational pictures (as opposed to abstract), one big difference between a photo and a painting is that a photo is taken with one "eye" and a painting is made with two (usually). What does this mean? Well, one eye cannot perceive depth or three dimensions the way two eyes can. Therefore, a photo inevitably has a flatness despite there being clues to it representing a three dimensional world. There is an inherent impossibility in both painting and photography: How to represent a three dimensional reality on a flat surface. Both do it through various kinds of distortion. For me, the big difference with a painting is that that distortion is decided by a painter with two eyes who can therefore choose to distort in a way that give the feeling or impression or illusion of three dimensions in ways that a photo never can. Of course, many modern painters chose to deliberately flatten the world they depicted (e.g. Gauguin), but others, even modern painters, used all kinds of ways to describe depth while still endorsing the picture plane (see Bonnard, for instance). Another major difference between the two mediums I think is the element of time. A photograph usually represents a fraction of a second, while a painting, even a quick painting, is made over a much longer period of time and must somehow account for that time, describe it in some way. We think of photography as the more "realistic" of the two. But is it really? Do we ever see the world the way a photograph records it? No, we don't. That's why we are so often shocked to see what we look like in photos because in life we never see people frozen in time. Of course, the way a photo is made and the way a painting is made is completely different. One hardly involves the human touch; the other is made completely by hand. But that's obvious, so I thought I'd mention these other two differences.