H&H Photographers, a 65-year-old, full-service photography and video studio, has moved from Riverdale to Irvington. The company is currently owned and managed by Larry Gillet and Dan Fried, the sons of the founders.

Gillet has been with H&H since 1984 after attending the Culinary Institute of America. Fried, who was employed at the company during summers while a student at Cornell University, returned five years ago. He previously held several positions in the film industry where he worked with brother Rob Fried, a film producer, and later became a producer himself.

In 1996, Fried was visiting from Los Angeles during a Thanksgiving vacation trip when a fire destroyed the H&H building in the Riverdale section of The Bronx. Fried decided to extend his stay to help the studio get back on its feet.

“The staff, clients and community really came together to help us,” he said. “That rejuvenated in me the sense of pride every son has in his dad’s business. Five years ago, I took a leap of faith and returned to New York.”

It turned out to be a perfect time to reenter the photography business.

“The explosion of digital photography and content was taking place,” he pointed out, “and many other parallels between independent producing and photography and video were emerging that I couldn’t foresee.” That was when his father, Curt Fried, decided to retire at the age of 81.

The company was formed shortly after the end of World War II. With their military service ending, Curt and his friend, Harold Gillet, decided to start a photography studio in late 1945. Curt, then age 22, was awaiting discharge from the U.S. Army, where he had served as a telegraph operator. Harold, 21, had already received his discharge papers from the U.S. Navy.

Harold had attended a photography school; Curt had no formal training in photography but had worked in close proximity with a photography unit recording the building of the Burma Road from Burma to China. Today, both founders are long retired and living in Florida.

In his 13 years in Hollywood, films Dan helped bring to the screen include “O,” a modern version of Shakespeare’s “Othello” (2001); “The Illusion” starring Kirk Douglas as an aged film director reunited with an estranged son (2004); “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (1993); Rudy (1993); and “The Stupids”, directed by John Landis (1996).

In 2005, the studio received an email from a serviceman stationed in Iraq looking to hire a photographer to capture his proposal on horseback to his girlfriend, upon his scheduled return to the United States.

Fried put the prospective groom in contact with a friend at NBC’s The Today Show, knowing it was planning a series of surprise proposals leading up to Valentine’s Day. The prospective groom was a New York City police officer (as was the prospective bride) and an ex-marine who had reenlisted after 9/11. The proposal turned into a segment called “Will You Marry Me,” set at the New York Botanical Gardens Holiday Train Show.

The H&H Photographers crew photographed the newly engaged pair as they toured the Ritz Carlton in Battery Park, shopped at Bloomingdale’s for wardrobe, incorporated jewelry by Van Cleef & Arpels, and ended the day attending a fireworks display by the Grucci family, all recorded for prosperity by H&H Photographers.

“It was a pleasant opportunity to put my production background to work,” Fried said.

The new home for the studio is the Trent Building overlooking the Hudson in Irvington. Designed by Stanford White and built in 1895, the structure was the previous headquarters of Cosmopolitan magazine.

Fried is the husband of DeLauné Michel, founder of literary salon, Spoken Interludes.