Immediately after high school, Terrel worked at Fredda Von Zell's portrait studio. Originally, she had a consignment studio set up at the White House Department Store, but by the time my dad worked for her, she had opened her own studio, and at one time had a location in Logan Heights to take advantage of photographing the soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss. Terrel further learned darkroom techniques; so much so that he explained he could eventually look at the negative and calculate the exposure needed for  the enlargements without running test strips. During his time at Von Zell's, he and Fredda traveled to the Chicago Photography Conference that year.