I've previously talked about my hoarding instinct - I keep beautiful images and quotes and refer to them for inspiration. Out of curiosity I had a look today at how my hoard was developing - over 8500 images in just over a year. That equates to finding approximately 23 stunning things a day!
If you hadn't already gathered - I'm extremely picky - liking roughly 1 in 50 things that I see. So I've consumed a vast amount to build a hoard of this size. I find it no chore to digest massive amounts of visual information, it's a pleasure. Rather like the Victorian butterfly collector, I cherish rare beauties and pin them in my book to reflect on later.
I frequently revisit the hoard and delete anything that no longer 'speaks' to me. This is a natural evolution of my taste and eye. This analysis helps to identify trends in my collection: colour spectrums, light and shadow, atmosphere, nature, kawaii, minimalism etc.
I hope that soon the right platform will exist for me to have my entire hoard in a cloud based archive (rather like delicious) where I can use my own taxonomy to tag the images. In the meantime I'll keep collecting and digitising my paper hoard...
