Mitch Rossow – Minneapolis Artwork Photography Expert

How Mitch Rossow Became an Artwork Photographer

My journey into artwork photography started organically. I was studying Plein Air painting and working as a freelance web designer and product photographer. As I built websites for other artists, I realized how difficult it was to photograph paintings well. Lighting issues, glare, color accuracy; it’s a tricky process that isn’t really photography, it’s engineering.

But I had an unusual background that gave me the tools to solve this puzzle.

I grew up in my family’s print shop, spending my after-school hours in the darkroom operating a half-ton process camera. My first professional job out of art school was in the commercial print industry, where color accuracy wasn’t a preference — it was a measurable, contractual standard. To work there, I had to pass a clinical color vision test far beyond the standard dot test. I passed. I learned I have verifiably perfect color vision, which is a meaningful — not incidental — asset for color-critical work. In school, I studied pigment chemistry and color theory seriously: different paint brands of the same color photograph differently, and knowing why is the difference between correcting a painting and correcting toward what a camera thinks it saw.

With that foundation, I built my own studio from scratch, custom-ordered a landscape-format digital camera and prime lens, developed proprietary lighting and color correcting techniques, and began serving some of the most respected painters in the Midwest.

Artists Who Trust Mitch Rossow

Over 15 years I’ve built working relationships with some of the most accomplished painters in the Twin Cities. Paul Oxborough‘s paintings have hung in the Smithsonian and the British and Scottish National Galleries. Mary Pettis is an ARC Living Master. Kelly Schamberger has shown at Sotheby’s New York and had her work placed in a time capsule on the moon. Steven J. Levin has been bringing his classical atelier work to me for over a decade.

These aren’t exceptional cases — they’re the outcome of a consistent process applied over many years. Whether the paintings are headed to a major juried competition, a gallery submission, or a giclée printer, the standard is the same: color that matches the original, detail that holds up at full resolution, and lighting that reveals the work without distortion.

Mitch Rossow’s Technical Expertise Across Every Medium

The artists I work with regularly include plein air painters, classical atelier-trained figurative painters, abstract and mixed media artists, and painters working in traditional oil techniques that date back centuries. Each discipline has its own relationship with light, color, and surface — and each requires a different technical approach. Plein air palettes rely on specific pigments that shift hue under studio lighting, and the mass relationships of greens and high-key cloud passages need careful clarification to read the way they do in person. Atelier paintings demand precise histogram correction to preserve the subtle value transitions built through layers of glazing.
I’ve also photographed illuminated manuscripts for churches and historical maps for archival societies — work where accuracy isn’t aesthetic, it’s documentary. For competition submissions, I maintain presets calibrated to the specific file requirements of major juried shows, so you get exactly the right dimensions, resolution, and color profile for each submission without having to figure it out yourself.

The Temporary Collector

One of the unexpected joys of this work is that I get to spend time with beautiful artwork before the public sees it. I lightheartedly refer to myself as Minneapolis’s largest “temporary art collector.” Every week, I get to study new paintings up close, fresh off the easel — examining brushwork, color harmonies, and compositional decisions in the kind of detail most viewers never get.
Photographing a painting is a slow, attentive process. You notice things. The way a particular artist builds glazing layers. How a plein air painter handles the edge where sky meets land. The specific orange a painter mixes for late afternoon light versus midday. I’ve spent 15 years accumulating that kind of close looking, and it informs how I correct and document every piece that comes through the studio.
I’ve learned so much from the artists I work with, from rising students finding their voice to award-winning professionals refining every stroke. It’s a privilege to learn from them while helping their work reach the world.

Let’s Work Together

• South Minneapolis studio at 2886 James Ave S #208 — by appointment
• Specializing in oil paintings and all flat 2D artwork
• Custom precision lighting with less than 1% variation across the painting surface
• High-resolution files ready for competition submission, print reproduction, and portfolio
• Clinically verified perfect color vision — a measurable asset for color-critical work