Louisa Elizabeth How

[3] How, whose surviving output is found in one album made over only two years, was evidently an accomplished and enthusiastic artist whose photographic knowledge was derived, historians surmise,[3] from any of several possible sources; perhaps from practitioners in England before migrating, from her reading, or from local contacts, or any combination of those.

[4] Most likely she read the several extensive and instructive articles on the processes of photography that she herself used, in her copy of the English Art-Journal from vol.12, of 1850; in fact, it is presumed that the first photograph How made was of a Richard Austin Artlett engraving from the same volume,[5] a portrait on page 297 of Emma Jane, Dowager Countess of Darnley after the unfinished painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence,[6][7] now in the British Museum.

She set up a makeshift studio on her verandah,[19] using furniture, drapes and props including a stereoscope and stereo cards,[20] so as to shorten exposure conditions with brighter lighting, but make it appear that the pictures were made indoors.

[23] Her varied subjects include visitors to Woodlands, appearing relaxing in conversation, drinking and dining, several in groups and some of those more formal, and the rest being individual portraits; the merchants George S. Caird, Robert P. Paterson and Hendricks Anderson, the explorer William Landsborough with his Aboriginal companion 'Tiger’,[24] the settlers Charles Morison from Glenmorison, New England and John Glen.

[25] Photography historian Gael Newton admires How's "fine sense of composition"[18] and Judy Annear notes that her portraits are "most compelling, posed and yet relaxed, outdoor, convivial and engaged," while Professor Martyn Jolly argues that they are rare in that they "take us so closely into the bodily interrelationships of colonial Australians.