Hampton Photo Arts Consolidates to Southampton Location, Expands Capacity for Larger Art Projects

Hampton Photo Arts and Framing has closed its longtime Bridgehampton location and now only will operate from its location in Southampton.

The business provides a wide variety of services, the most notable being photo framing, art framing and canvas printing. The store also provides an art delivery service and sells art supplies.

The decision to focus solely on the Southampton location came from a desire to have all of the business’s staff in one location, as well as make things easier for the art deliveries the business does.

“We were sort of split between two locations,” said co-owner Ben McHugh. “Now, we have everybody under one roof. All the pick-ups and deliveries are coming to one place and leaving from the same place, so it made it easier for us to handle.”

McHugh said that “we were sort of handcuffed” in the Bridgehampton location due to the building’s space constraints, which made it tough to work on large photo and art requests. This isn’t an issue at the Southampton location, as McHugh noted, “Now we have a ton of area to work on things.”

He explained that the smaller Bridgehampton space, which was roughly 1,600 square feet, became trickier to work out of as art requests have gotten larger in scale over time, which has correlated with an increase in house sizes and wall space.

“As the business has been growing, people’s homes and walls in our community have gotten bigger, too,” he said. “Because of that, art has gotten bigger, photo printing has gotten bigger, and we wouldn’t be able to accommodate the future of where art is going here locally in a smaller spot.”

The increasing scale of the art requests is one of the biggest changes the business has dealt with over the years, going from small scale prints only a few inches in length in width to much more expansive works.

“When someone said an enlargement or blow-up [when the business opened], they meant 8 inches by 10 inches, 11 inches by 14 inches, or 16 inches by 20 inches,” he said. “Now, we’re stretching canvases that are 72 inches by 100 inches — which is insane.”

Now, with one main location, McHugh said that the business can “take on any size framing project” thanks to the spatial capabilities in Southampton.

The store was launched in the late 1980s by his father, Dave McHugh. The younger McHugh took an interest in the shop at a young age. He recalled being particularly interested in the people who shopped at the store. “There’s a wide variety of types that shop at our store, like photographers and celebrities,” he said. “Famous people, crazy people, nice people, all types of people — and I was always attracted to that.”

McHugh and his father decided to open the second location in Southampton in 2017 in order to keep up with the increasingly large print requests, which kept increasing in recent years. “We thought that it would be smart to get a bigger spot earlier in the game knowing that we would need it and have bigger equipment to be able to do oversized framing and printing projects,” he said.

McHugh currently oversees the multitude of services that Hampton Photo Arts provides. Of these services, picture framing is his favorite, since “every single project is different, and you always have to be on the ball” in coming up with something that’s both creative and matches the image well.

He also explained his process for selecting a photo frame, most of which depends on the client and their preferences, as well as the art.

“The personality of the person goes into it,” he said. “Some people like warm colors, some people like cool colors. It’s sort of a mix between where it’s going, what the artwork is and the client themselves.”

Hampton Photo Arts also features the work of a rotation of local artists and photographers, many of whom shop at the store, adding a community aspect to the business.

“A lot of the people who are the local artists shop here and are friends [of ours],” he said. “It gives them exposure. Maybe not a lot, but it’s an added service that we provide.”