Tim Brown, the owner of TAB Photographic & Muddy Paw Studios, hasn't put up his signage yet, and he's still working on the interior, but in a few days he'll begin shooting in his new studio at 51 Bridge St. in Collinsville. Photo: dotCANTON
By Steve Wilder dotCANTON.com
Photography was in its infancy back in the 1870s, when the property now identified as 51 Bridge St. in Collinsville was in the early years of a long run as a general store.
It’s highly unlikely anything related to “taking pictures” was sold there at the time, and if a wise-guy prognosticator had told a store patron late in the 19th century that a photographer using something called digital technology would occupy the premises in 2010, well, the prognosticator would have gotten at least a look.
At the same time, no one in the 1870s could have imagined how many motor vehicles would be passing by the location at the intersection of Route 179 in 2010. “What, exactly, is a motor vehicle?”
Tim Brown, the owner of TAB Photographic & Muddy Paw Studios at 51 Bridge St., has studied the history of the building and the traffic flow figures for the site. The history was intriguing; the traffic flow figures were flat-out enticing. That’s why Brown is moving his business back to Collinsville after a brief time at Real Art Ways in Hartford.
Brown, who bought a house in Collinsville in 2005 and initially took studio space in an old Collins Co. building, admits he was seduced away from town by the modern amenities at Real Art Ways, but he says, “When I went to Hartford, all the Farmington Valley business I had went away.”
Brown grew up in Deep River and Essex. Though his father was a commercial photographer, Brown didn’t follow that path right away. He moved west for a time, lived in Colorado and Arizona and raced mountain bikes professionally in the 1990s. When he returned to Connecticut late in the decade, he got involved in computer marketing and website development for automobile dealers. Brown hadn’t considered being a photographer until his father became ill in 2005.
“His illness sparked it back into me,” Brown says.
Brown wasn’t familiar with Collinsville while he was growing up on the shoreline. But the area “made an impression” later during trips through on his bike. He says Collinsville reminds him of some of the small towns he saw in the West and that it possesses a shoreline feel he enjoys.
So, on Wednesday, Oct. 6, Brown will start shooting photographs in a building he says has also been home to a package store, a flower shop and a dance studio, among other things. The TAB Photographic side of his business specializes in portraits and weddings involving human beings. The Muddy Paw Studios side, as you might have guessed, focuses on portrait work involving our canine pals.
“It’s a side of my business I never really thought about,” Brown says. “But it’s taken off. In the next five weeks I have four dog sessions. It’s grown more and more, and I really don’t advertise; it’s word of mouth.”
Isn’t it difficult to take pictures of dogs?
Not really, Brown says. “I honestly believe I can connect with them.”
