Royal Photo Company Royal Photo Company Louis Bramson established the Royal Photo View Company in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1904. In 1908, the company was renamed the Royal Photo Company. The Royal Photo Company focused on commercial photography and, unlike many other photographic businesses, did not operate a studio for portraits. Clients included Hillerich & Bradsby—makers of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat—and other businesses such as Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Company, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, and the Kaufman-Straus department store. Stern Bramson (1912–1989), the son of Louis Bramson, joined the studio upon graduation from DuPont Manual High School in 1930 and remained
Hillerich & Bradsby moved across the Ohio River, to Jeffersonville, Indiana, to take advantage of the railroad line there. In the 1990s, the company returned south to Louisville. Most of Hillerich and Bradsby's wood bats are made from Northern white ash grown in proprietary forests on the New York–Pennsylvania border. Ash trees in the United States are now under attack from the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect species native to Asia and first detected in Michigan in 2002. While H&B's forests are not yet infested by the beetle, the area being destroyed is growing and moving closer to them. The company is