A Difference of Opinion

I've been listing my photos and art on deviantart.com for more than three years now.  It's fun to get your stuff out there and it's a good barometer to see what people like and don't like. On the other hand, there's no accounting for good taste.  Some things I post with high hopes of it being wildly popular, only to discover that the peeps are not all that thrilled.
Take the old leaf shown here.  I ran the original photo through a couple filter programs to get the "paint by numbers" look.  Then I painstakingly cleaned up around the edges and added a black and white, out of focus background.  Now the crumpled leaf really pops.

Deviantart.com got the name because it wants to see artists deviate from the norm.  Deviant, in this instance, does not mean weirdo.  They're looking for something different,  creative.

I thought this leaf would find an audience on deviantart.com, but it was a dud.  It was all the things the DA community usually goes for.  Grunge. Manipulation.  Color splash.  Composition.  It even had a cool title: "Crumpled and Twisted."

I've posted other things I thought were just so-so, only to discover they were very popular.  Maybe I'm the one with bad taste.  Either way, it all comes down to a difference of opinion.