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This debate is very interesting: it also provides good arguments in leading the taste of my clients, whose eyes are often so contaminated by photographic vision that they expect a photographic approach.
I found the use of photos as difficult to master as the use of the brush.
Only recently I think I achieved a balance between the one eyed and the stereo vision Allan has so well explained.
I was delighted when I read David Bailey's A Secret Knowledge, were he explains how almost all the great portraitists of the past used any optical device available(camera lucida, lenses, mirrors, prisms).
As using the same palette of a great artist does not automatically make us as good as him, so using photos does not make a good painting, unless we have the skill to go beyond the photo; a skill which you can only aquire by painting life at any occasion.
I was distressed when my tutor at art school could spot all the paintings done from photos from the live ones and made the good proposition of incorporating live sittings in every commissions!
Quote from Byatt's Essay ' Why painted portrait?'
"What distinguishes painting (or drawing or etching)
From photography
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