Contradiction

This parrot was done with using Illustrator few years ago, I liked it at that moment since it could show much more details and looked more attractive than simply a cartoon drawing with flat colours.

But there is a question in my mind later on: it represents nothing except to spend time to trace the reality actually, then why don't we use the photo? The reasons I'm doing this again nowadays may be its file size is smaller than photo, easily for handling for output without worry of resolution, or just want to kill time...