Saturday in the Studio – Louise Magno

In the Studio with
Louise Magno

About Louise

Photography is my first love. Wildlife, Flowers, and Landscapes, are my favorite subjects, but architecture also intrigues me. I am always looking for a unique perspective & try to share it with all who see my work. My goal is to capture moments in time with my work. I am also a graphic artist with bold renditions of my photography on selected pieces. Some pictures just beg to be played with and altered. I teach occasionally at the Allied Arts Gallery as well as other locations.

How did you start making art?

My love of photography began as a child. I was intrigued by cameras and how this box could capture a moment. I would look at photos and be in awe. My first camera was a brownie camera. I loved looking into the top of the box that hung around my neck so I could see the image I was about to take a picture of. I really liked taking pictures of animals and birds. I didn’t like to have staged pictures unless it was the family or friends at a location. My family indulged the budding photographer and allowed me to take pictures, but I don’t think they fully understood how captivated I was with the entire process.

Life found me a young mother of (3) boys so I needed to be focused on raising them and building my career as a Systems Analyst/Programmer/Project Manger for Boeing. But my love of Photography never left me. After the boys were raised and I had finished earning my various degrees I started to nurture the creative side of me by doing things like pottery and painting classes. In my painting class I asked if I could use my own photography to work from and the instructor, our well known Jennifer Bowman asked me why I wasn’t doing something with my photography work. I was so encouraged by her that I ultimately opened my own studio in 2004 and she mentored me in 2008 to how to grow my studio during the tulip festival when she gave me my first big break to show/sell my work at Tulip Town.

Why do you create and what need does it satisfy?

Being able to create with my camera basically balances my scales. My career at Boeing was very structured and technical. Once I began exploring the creative side of me, I felt balance come into my life to give voice to my love of photography and to finally share my moments in time that I was capturing. I feel like my camera is an extension of me, that we become one together. My camera allows me to breathe!

As an artist, what is your most important tool?

My cameras and my imagination. I tune out the world when I am shooting and get into a zone that is hard to explain. If you can imagine a juggler juggling balls. That person moves into a realm with the balls to keep them in the air and moving. They need to tune out everything else. That is what happens when I am shooting. I get into a zone where I don’t talk to people around me and become one with my camera and suddenly the world changes with this new perspective and that is what I want to capture and share.

What is something that you can’t live without in your studio and why?

I would guess in my actual studio it would be the computer as that is my dark room. I started doing photography back in the 70’s where I would rent time in the dark room to process my work. The days of chemicals are behind me and now all post processing is done on my computer using Photoshop.

What is your least favorite part of your process?

In order to have a studio and sell my work I need to have a business. That means creating an inventory system, tracking costs, paperwork, taxes, business reports and all that is stuff. Devil is in the details.

What is your favorite part?

Connecting with people. My fun part is when art inspires art. And my favorite part – I feel happy when I am out shooting, I am breathing! But I feel happiest when I connect with others. I am trying to capture moments in time and when someone else gets it, or it touches them down to their core, their soul that is when I am the happiest. For example, I did a shot once of a barn in the Grand Tetons. The man who bought it just cried as it invoked such deep beautiful memories. All day people, total strangers came up to me to share how deeply it touched him. That is my favorite part when I connect with others.