Portrait of Terry Cella, printer surrounded by 'flying' business cards. Created by Pete Bresser, photographerTerry Cella is a printer on a mission. He always wants to create great deals for his customers and help them through the processes of creating artwork, right through to delivery of the final printed matter. His mission is helping ease the pain of a process that is not familiar to the average small business; whether that’s producing leaflets, pop up banners or business cards. He is a dynamic, energetic, fun character and an archetypal ‘cheeky chappy’.

I know Terry well, as we have been on the same business networking circuit for some time. I have pulled his leg about his ‘dodgy’ social media profile images over that time – and finally he agreed to do something about it. Terry decided that he wanted a series of shots that would be a little different from the standard white background profile images that are prevalent on websites, but budgets are always a consideration so staging a background for his portrait was more challenging.

PortraitAs I wanted to capture an element of Terry’s personality as well as add a dynamic appearance to the photograph, I put to Terry an idea that I did with a child’s portrait a few years ago that involves a multiple exposure and grafting the shots together into one. We thought it would be a fun idea to have Terry in the middle of a rain of business cards (one of his best selling printed products) instead of sweets. Rather that have Terry with more than one head and two arms, the camera goes onto a tripod so it doesn’t move. Then I engineered the shots so that each time Terry threw cards into the air around him, I clicked the shutter. Some shots had business cards obscuring his face; others were out of shot. By adding together the cards and the facial expression of the best images, I created a montaged photograph that fitted the brief.

We had other shots with slightly different arrangements, but they too captured action, personality as well as likeness. With a shoot like this, the important element is the client gets a unique arrangement, but it still offers a great portrait shot that will add an extra visual dimension to social media profiles. Terry is also using the shots on his new website as well as in printed matter.