I've never written a journal post on deviantART before, so I will be very interested to see whether anyone reads this.

Since almost none of my work is scanned, my experience of deviantART is limited to looking for work that I like for addition to my favorites gallery. I put a lot of time into the search for photographs that I consider to be excellent and to be of interest to me. I usually feel as if I am looking for a needle in a haystack. It is not unusual for me to spend an hour clicking through pages of new photographs, only to find one image of interest, or none at all.

If I have added your photograph to my favorites gallery, you can rest assured that I considered it to be both excellent and interesting. Possible exception for pictures of film cameras—I'm a real sucker for those, even if they aren't great art.

But I often ask myself: what does my favorites gallery say about me? About my taste, interests and standards? For example, if I go to another member's profile page, and I find that his favorites gallery contains nothing but nudes of an erotic kind, I begin to question whether his interest is really about art or simple voyeurism. Turning that kind of judgment around and applying it to myself, what would visitors to my profile page be entitled to conclude about me?

One thing that would be obvious is that I very much like good portraiture and tasteful nudes. So on those two points, my favorites gallery represents me well. There would probably be even more portraiture, if it weren't for the fact that many of these photographs on deviantART are cosplay shots (which are of no interest to me) and that many of the portraits feature bad composition or distracting backgrounds.

On the other hand, I also have a strong interest in still lifes, certain architectural shots, and landscapes of a certain kind (not cliche subjects like color sunsets over water). Why aren't there more photographs in these categories in my favorites gallery? Frankly, I have a hard time finding many that I really like. I certainly look for them. Many of the still lifes are shots of dolls, which are a strange thing about this site, and they don't interest me at all. Does anyone else find that to be unusual?

So what do you think it is possible to tell about a person from his favorites gallery? I'll be interested to see whether anyone responds to this.