Paintings Off photographs

[Csae]

Hey, i was cruising around and i landed on this guy selling "hand paintings" of photographs.

There are a couple things that went through my head,

1) These didnt look very hand painted either hes fricking amazing or he poped the photoshop filter on light and called it done.

2) Legally would he be allowed to copy other's photographs ? I saw one or two of the more famous photographs, and i wouldn't believe him to have gotten permission.

I was pondering this because i've always wanted to score a permit and sell my photographs in that area but it would be odd for me to sell original photographs and then have him do a "hand painted" version.

Some were pretty shitty photographs though and he was clearly uneasy with me and my C33 around Heh.

Just a couple thoughts that poped in me cabesa, what do you guys think ?

[Mark_48]

You might recall there was a good deal of controversy about the poster that Shepard Fairey created from an original which a Reuters photographer had taken.
http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2009/01/15/iconic-obama-poster-based-on-reuters-photo/
Personally unless permission is obtained, I don't think it's too ethical to use someone elses work as a basis to "create" presumably another work of art. I don't know about the legality of it and I don't know how Fairey ended up.

So far as "hand painting", have you thought about trying it yourself? The image below I did in Corel Painter, but there are other programs including Photoshop that can do it as well.