Interpreting and appreciating art is a personal experience. What one person may love, another may dislike, or "not get". When I post my pictures on the
flickr website, I get immediate feedback and it allows me to ponder what others might see in the pictures. While I only post pictures that I think have some merit, sometimes the reaction is out of synch with my own opinion of the shot.
Here's what I'm reacting to... last week in a poring rain storm I parked myself underneath a building portico and took a lot of pictures of wet people. Since it was dark, I used a high ISO, this meant that the pictures would be brighter but also grainier. Here is the picture that I started working with. Not a great picture, but with some post-processing, it looked to have some potential.

The main appeal to me in the composition was the positioning of the cab turning onto Park Row. So, I cropped it and straightened it. It was OK, but nothing special to me. So, I started playing around with some of the values in Lightroom, a tool I use to manage my photo library. I finally settled on posting this version of the picture.

I thought it was good, and fairly interesting, but those on flickr responded in a way that was out of synch with how I saw the picture. They made it by marking it with the most "favorites" of any picture I have ever put up there, and in the shortest amount of time. As a matter of fact, when I saw it online, I wasn't completely happy with it. I was going to replace it with a version that I had worked with before posting it, which was this one.

I do think this one is the best, but I won't replace it since people liked the other one so much. In any case, it is ultimately a creation of art, using only the building blocks of what was there. And, I'm quite happy with that result.
In the end though, while I think it's a very good picture, I do not think it is great. (There are others I've taken that I think are great which have barely gotten a reaction). But that's just what I think, and what do I know, I'm only one person.