Paul Skelhorne

And why am I asking this question? Yeah, I’ve got a tip for you buddy…the tip of my beak… (Photo: Author) My wife, Diana, leads art workshops. Diana works for weeks, sometimes months to prepare for each workshop. She plasters posters all over town, talks up her workshops on social media, sends emails to past workshop participants and encourages people she meets on the street to attend her workshops. She buys supplies, secures a location and writes up and designs handout materials. Diana is...

You can’t see her, but my wife is standing between this tourist and the fountain in Porto, Portugal. He jumped in front of me just as I was about to take a photo. So he became my subject. (Photo: Author) The first time I remember it happening was years ago, on the Big Island of Hawaii. We were at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, waiting for night to fall so we could get a good view of a lava lake that had recently bubbled to the surface. I set up my tripod in the viewing area, noticing...

This robin has a pretty simple metric of success: find a worm and eat or don’t find a worm and go hungry. (Photo: Author) The trickiest part of “creative success” for me is knowing when I’ve achieved it. Creative success is a moving target I seem to redefine…well, almost daily. One day I’m headed for the stars; the next day I’m wallowing in a pit of despair. I want to get off that emotional teeter-totter. I want long-term ways to measure my progress toward creative success so I’ll know when...