By Scott Morgan
Have you ever driven the kids to a big box store to get a family portrait taken? There is a certain sameness to the photos of your family and others’ families. Not so much in the poses, but in the backgrounds.
For Mike Brescio, co-owner of TSS Photography at 2910 South Broad Street, this is no small thing. The screen that projects virtual backgrounds his studio uses were actually built for NASA (yes, that NASA), a highly reflective gray screen that, with the right camera and technology, can put you, your family, the dog and anyone else in front of any of several thousand backdrops.
As you might expect, NASA-worthy equipment doesn’t come cheap and isn’t something just anyone can use. Brescio actually had to take a training class in how to use the screen, which is so reflective that a standard camera taking a flash photo of it would record little more than a washed-out white mess.
Virtually putting a backdrop behind a person might sound a lot like Hollywood green screen technology, but it isn’t. Brescio explains that in green screen, a background must be placed over the green areas after the recording is over. With his gray screen, you get to see, live, what your pictures will look like before anyone snaps the shutter.
TSS’s studio is a rarity. TSS is a national franchise that concentrates on school portraits and school sports, and most franchise outlets take their entire practice on the road. Brescio (who owns the business with his wife, Margaret) started out that way, too. His TSS franchise started as a home-based operation that in five years has grown exponentially — largely, he says, because he has a studio space and a guarantee that he will retake photos you don’t like.
Brescio, a retired Navy man, got into the business when Switlik Park in Yardville hosted a game for the Little League World Series in 2006. He had always been a photo hobbyist, and when he walked down to see the game he spotted TSS photographers snapping pictures of the players and the game.
“I thought, ‘I can do that,’” he says.
So Brescio struck up a conversation with the photographer, found out how to get into franchise, and “it went from there,” he says. According to the International Franchise Association, a TSS franchise costs between $30,525 and $75,150 to start up. There is a 25 percent veteran’s discount, which for Brescio and his wife works out twofold. Margaret Brescio is in the National Guard, doing her third tour overseas. She is in Afghanistan and is due home in January.
Taking local sports pictures and sending them to his wife as a way of keeping her up with homegrown happenings is how things kicked off for Brescio. Soon, the parents of school athletes were asking him if he did portraits. And soon after that, he set up his shop on South Broad Street, where he or one of his two full-timers takes portraits of everything from basic sit-downs to group shots involving three sick kids and six small dogs. Yes, that really happened.
Brescio’s studio became so successful that he operates two others, one in Bucks County, Pa., and one in Burlington County. His territory is all over the Mid-Atlantic, shooting everything from military functions to cheerleading competitions between here and Washington, D.C.
Brescio admits his photography is “not the cheapest around. But you get what you pay for.” And in truth, his biggest competition is not Sears or Wal-Mart, it’s digital cameras in the hands of parents at the same games he’s shooting.
But while action shots are a hard sell these days, portraits and weddings are still moneymakers for Brescio. And to hear him say it, he almost (almost) sounds surprised.
“It just keeps growing and growing,” he says.
TSS Photography is located at 2910 South Broad Street in Hamilton. For more information, call (609) 585-2338.
TSS Photography’s office at 2910 South Broad Street in Hamilton is a rarity in the photo business. (Photo courtesy of TSS Photography.)
