Your Painting Deserves to Look Like Itself
Professional, glare-free artwork photography for painters who care about accuracy. Oils, watercolors, mixed media, gold leaf — every medium, done right.

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I’m Precise About Color Accuracy
Every image is corrected to match your original — not what a camera algorithm thinks it sees. What your painting actually is.

Pricing My approach to color
Competition Jurors See Your Work First in a Photo
That photo should be accurate. I’ve helped hundreds of Twin Cities artists make the right first impression with juries, galleries, and collectors.

Pricing See Competitions for Artists
Varnished Paintings Are Not a Problem
Custom lighting with less than 1% variation across the entire surface. No glare, no hot spots — even on dark nocturnes and heavily varnished work.

Pricing See my process
Your iPhone Doesn‘t Know It’s Photographing a Painting
It darkens skies, shifts color temperature, and HDR-processes your brushwork into something unrecognizable. I do not.

Pricing Why phones get it wrong
Print-Ready Files From Every Session
36 megapixels at up to 7360 × 4912 pixels. High enough resolution for gallery-quality prints at any size, for years to come.

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Trusted by Minnesota’s Top Painters for 18 Years
Mary Pettis, Paul Oxborough, James Vose, Kevin Komadina — the painters who care most about how their work looks trust me to document it.

Pricing Meet the Artists
South Minneapolis Studio. By Appointment.
Drop off your paintings at my studio at 2886 James Ave S. I handle everything from there — and I treat every painting like it’s headed to the Smithsonian.

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Professional Artwork Photography for Artists in Minneapolis

Minneapolis Artwork Photographer and Painting Photographer

I’m Mitch Rossow, a Minneapolis artwork photographer and painting photographer who has spent the past 18 years doing one thing: making paintings look exactly like themselves in a photograph. I’ve photographed for hundreds of Twin Cities artists — oils, watercolors, pastels, prints, and mixed media — for competition submissions, gallery applications, print sales, portfolio documentation, and archival records. Artwork is the only thing I photograph. It’s all I do, and after 18 years, I do it well.

Before I photographed paintings for a living, I worked as a professional color separator and trained as an artist. I understand pigment chemistry, how different mediums respond to light, how plein air palettes behave differently from atelier work, and what a painter is trying to do with a particular passage of color. When I correct the color on your painting, I’m correcting toward what your pigments actually are — not what a camera algorithm thinks they should look like.

Over 18 years working with hundreds of artists, one thing has stayed constant: accurate, beautiful photography is foundational to an artist’s career, not optional, not a luxury. It’s how your work gets seen by jurors, galleries, and collectors before they ever see the piece in person. That’s still the philosophy behind everything I do.

See Pricing & What’s Included

Your Painting’s First Impression Is a Photograph

Most competition jurors, gallery directors, and potential buyers see your work for the first time in a photograph — not in person. If the photo is off, the impression is too.

The image I create of your painting isn’t just a reproduction — it’s your artwork’s first impression. I’ve spent 18 years developing a specialized system for artwork photography that delivers accurate color, fine detail, and glare-free lighting that reveals your work without distraction.

What inaccurate photography costs you:

Competition jurors evaluate a different painting than the one you made
Print files that don’t reproduce your colors faithfully
Collectors who arrive expecting one painting and find another
A portfolio that undersells work you spent months on

Artwork Photography Services for Artists

I photograph all types of 2D artwork, including work that gives other photographers trouble:

Painting photography for oils, including highly varnished, dark nocturnes, and impasto-heavy work.
Watercolors, pastels, ink, graphite, and drawings
Gold leaf, metallics, and reflective mixed media
Acrylic paintings and textured surfaces

Unusual Mediums Welcome

Over 18 years I’ve also documented white pastel on black paper, ancient maps, tile, textile, knit work, collage, and crop art for the MN State Fair — if your medium is unusual, that’s not a problem, it’s an interesting Tuesday.

What You Receive

Every session delivers high-resolution digital files — up to 36 megapixels at 7360 × 4912 pixels — expertly color-corrected, evenly lit, and ready for:

Competition submissions and juried show applications
Print reproduction at any scale
Gallery submissions and artist websites
Social media and email newsletters
Press, editorial, and magazine features
Archival documentation and collector records

A Note on Varnish — Bring Your Work in Its Final State

I photograph unvarnished paintings regularly, but varnished work photographs truer. Varnish brings the contrast and blacks to their final state, which gives me the most accurate starting point for color correction. Many artists are hesitant to photograph varnished paintings — glare is a legitimate concern — but eliminating glare is exactly what I do.

My custom lighting system delivers less than 1% variation across the entire painting surface, even on heavily varnished work, dark nocturnes, and reflective gold leaf. If you’re planning to varnish, do it before you come in. Your photographs will be better for it.

What Sets This Artwork Photography Apart

Photographing paintings takes more than a camera and a tripod. It requires knowing what a painting is supposed to look like.

The color separator background. I spent years as a professional color separator — a discipline built entirely around understanding how pigments, inks, and light interact. That knowledge is baked into every color correction I make. When I look at a painting, I’m reading the pigment relationships, not just the pixels.

The trained artist’s eye. I know the difference between a plein air palette and an atelier palette. I know how different mediums — oil, watercolor, pastel — respond to light differently and need to be corrected differently. I know what a painter is trying to do with a passage of color, and I correct toward that intention, not away from it.

Your phone doesn’t know it’s photographing a painting. It identifies the scene — “landscape,” “sunset,” “interior” — and applies processing designed for real scenes, not paintings of them. It darkens bright areas, shifts color temperature, and HDR-processes your brushwork into something that can look nothing like your original. More on how I approach color • More on my studio and equipment

What Minneapolis Artists Say

“I’ve been working with Mitch for close to five years to document my paintings, especially large works with heavily reflective dark areas. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with those. He has perfected a process to remove all glare and truly capture my paintings for everything they actually are. We joked that it’s as much his photography as my paintings that help me win awards in an increasingly digital submission environment. Over the past few years I’ve received an Art Renewal Center award, an exhibition at Sotheby’s New York, art in a time capsule on the moon, and an image in Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. Highly recommend, 10 out of 10.”
— Kelly Schamberger, President of Outdoor Painters of Minnesota

“I’m a professional oil painter working in a very classical style, and Mitch has been photographing all my work for more than 10 years. He has thought out every detail of the process and has his method down to perfection. I get perfectly focused, color balanced, large file images without a hint of glare every time.”
— Steven J. Levin, Classical Atelier oil painter

“Mitch did a fantastic job photographing my oil paintings. Even the dark nocturne with transparent pigments turned out true to life. I had tried photographing it with my phone and was getting all kinds of crazy color contortions. Mitch called it the ‘stained glass effect’ and worked all his proprietary magic tricks to get the image to look just like the actual painting — without any glare or strange colors.”
— Tiry Salgado, oil painter

“As an artist, I couldn’t get by without Mitch’s artwork photography. Accurate color, high resolution, and glare-free. I create mixed media abstracts with lots of transparent areas — they’re not easy to photograph. Mitch always manages to capture them perfectly. His photographs allow me to offer gorgeous giclée reproductions of my work.”
— Carol Weissenborn, mixed media artist

See all 13 reviews on Google →

Schedule Your Artwork Photography Session

Sessions are available by appointment at my South Minneapolis studio. Bring your paintings and I handle everything from there — including the bubble wrap situation on the way out.

Studio address: 2886 James Ave S #208, Minneapolis, MN 55408

Whether you’re preparing for a show, entering a competition, updating your portfolio, or building your print sales catalog, I’ll make sure your work looks exactly like itself.

Get in touch to schedule

See Pricing & Specs

Helping Artists Succeed Beyond the Photograph

Good photography is the foundation. What you do with it is the career. I’ve built a set of free resources for Twin Cities artists — the kind of practical, specific information I’ve gathered from 18 years of watching what works for the painters I work with.

Artist Marketing Ideas That Actually Work in 2026 — Current, specific strategies for social media, email, AI tools, and more.
Art Competitions for Minneapolis Artists — A curated list of juried shows to gain exposure and credibility.
Art Fairs in the Twin Cities — Get your work in front of real buyers at local events.
Increase Your Artwork Sales by Offering Prints — How to open a second market for your work without cannibalizing original sales.
Getting Into an Art Gallery & Growing Your Collector Base — What the process actually looks like and what to do first.
How to Transport Paintings Safely — The $15 DIY Reflectix carrier and wet panel carrier guide.

Hiring me to photograph your paintings comes with something extra: your work gets featured, linked, and promoted to an audience of 1,700 artists and collectors through my monthly newsletter. That’s the Free Prize Inside.