Category Archives: THE BOROUGH

The Business People of Frenchtown

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Frenchtown is a small riverside village on the banks of the mighty Delaware River in Hunterdon County, NJ.  It has a long history, like most New Jersey towns, dating back to way back before the Europeans came for a visit.

Frenchtown hits that happy medium between being hip and being homey and is home to a nice collection of shops, cafes, restaurants, salons, yoga studios and artists.  This past weekend Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Love, Pray) had a book signing for her latest book, Home on the Range, a cookbook.  Knowing there would be lots of fans coming for the book signing, she engaged the business community.  To encourage book buyers to visit town many of the businesses prepared a recipe from the book and offered their creations to visitors throughout the weekend.

I thought this was a great opportunity to get shots of each of the business owners in their establishments and I spent Saturday scurrying around town, with my camera and lighting equipment to get portraits.  It was part photojournalism, part strategic portrait and a great way to get to know my fellow business professionals.

Mural Artist

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Adrienne Crombie, owner and artist of Murals and Moldings (http://muralsandmoldings.com/) has spent nearly a year creating a special public mural “Lenape Mural”  in Frenchtown. “This concrete building at 26 Race Street in Frenchtown, has inspired me to paint a mural. The Paddle Creek Kayak building (http://www.paddlecreekfrenchtown.com), it stands at the gateway to my little town on the Nishisakawick Creek.”

“Nishisakawick is translated from Lenape as, “two outlets of a stream near a house”. The Lenape Indians camped, hunted and fished the river on the land that we now occupy. They lived here for thousands of years. I wanted to pay tribute to the original sustainable community. I decided that I wanted to paint a Lenape encampment on the river, as it would’ve appeared before our intrusion.”

Adrienne started with a vision and a blank wall.  Last summer and this spring she worked on and completed the mural.  At it’s completion she asked Brokaw Photography to photograph it so posters could be made celebrating the mural.  It took a little extra effort to create a proper image of the mural, photographing it from a scaffolding at dawn (when the light was even) and then massaging the image to remove distracting elements.


Below is the final photo of the completed mural. This is the same image, before and after being enhanced and removing distracting elements.

Morning Lighting

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With a little light (just a little light…)

Sunday morning outside my photography studio in Frenchtown was balmy, almost tropical. Humid and overcast.

Nick was out with one of the Borough’s newest additions, Cousteau, the French bull dog.  I always love seeing Nick with Cousteau and ran over to get a photo, even though the lighting was a little weak.

But a photo opp is a photo opp, so I figure shoot first and ask questions later.  The fist photo came out a little dull, but fortunately I had a extra extra light in my pocket and splashed it all over poor Nick and Cousteau to get my second shot. Much more flavor.

They were so gracious.  Cousteau just shook it off (as dogs will do) and got light all over everybody.  No problem it didn’t stain.

Photographer Bill Brokaw