My Art Is Not Your Art

I can hand you my exact settings. Aperture. Shutter. ISO. The lens. The light I waited for. I do this all the time on Instagram.

You still won't take my picture.

That's the strange magic of it. Same numbers, same gear, and yet the image that comes out of you will never be the one that came out of me. Photography works that way. Every art does. What we make passes through us before it lands, and no two people carry the same weight behind their eyes.

I used to think that was the whole beauty of it. And it is.

But there's a flip side I didn't want to admit.

If my pictures come from me — really from me — then not everyone is going to like them. And I have to be honest. The first time someone didn't, it stung. It felt like more than a shrug at a photo. It felt like failure. Like I'd been measured and found short.

I sat with that for a long time.

Not everyone likes me as a person. I've made my peace with that one, mostly. So why did I expect my work to be any different? My photos are me. They carry my eye, my mood, the thing I noticed that you walked past. Of course they won't land for everyone.

My art may not be your art.

And that's okay.