A photographic caricature composite portrait of W.S. Laroche, identified by printed name on the mount face, makes this one of the most visually inventive cartes-de-visite in the format, produced by the Laroche studio of 58 Islington Row, Five Ways, Birmingham, a studio holding a royal warrant noted as Patronized by the Queen on the reverse. The image uses darkroom composite technique to attach an enormously enlarged head onto a photograph of Laroche's seated body, presenting him as a comically outsized artistic genius at work in a studio full portrait photographs, almost certainly a self-promotional trade card produced by Laroche to advertise his own portrait photography business.

Laroche sits at an easel retouching or painting over a photographic portrait, his grotesquely enlarged mustachioed head filling the upper half of the image, a flat cap perched on top. Two large framed portrait photographs lean against the easel and at right, and a painted sign at lower left carries his name and studio address at 5 Colmore Row, Islington Row, Birmingham. A scatter of cut photographs or paper fragments covers the carpet in the foreground.

The reverse bears the elaborate red-printed imprint of Laroche, 58 Islington Row, Five Ways, Birmingham, with the royal arms and the notation Patronized by the Queen above. A pencil notation reads "1E-479" at the lower left.