She started to take photographs in her youth, using a Brownie camera, switching to professional photography in the 1930s, following a trip abroad.
Eleanor Parke Custis used The bromoil process, invented in 1907, bleaching a print on bromide paper in order to remove the blackened silver.
In 1935 Eleanor Parke Custis wrote and illustrated a photography book - "Composition and Pictures".
She made her images softly focused, using a "Flou-Net" enlarging diffuser, invented by Belgian pictorialist Léonard Misonne.
This technique produced dark halos along the edges of shadowed areas, creating a romantic effect which was well suited to the travel photographs she made in Europe and South America.