by Carl Bretzke
I love how Carl Bretzke combines his incredible Plein Air painting skill with a touch of whimsy. Whether it’s a strangely anthropomorphic car hiding in the background or a dog gingerly passing through, you can always spot a Bretzke.
He created a great instructional video on how to paint nocturnes, you can watch a hour-long preview of it here.
Crop of full size high resolution photo to show detail.
Fine Art Plein Air Painter
I met Carl Bretzke back when I was taking landscape oil painting classes from Joe Paquet. I’ve enjoyed watching Carl develop his style and continuously improve over the years. Consequently he’s received many accolades in the past couple of years winning many Plein Air painting awards, here are some of his most recent:
The Washington Post included Carl in this Museum review.
Outdoor Painter bio article with my photos of Carl’s work.
His paintings often have large dark areas, rich color saturation and he varnishes them to a high shine. As a result, these qualities present major challenges to photograph, but they always come out because of my specialized process.
I want to express my gratitude for your dedication to your business, which means your dedication to your clients! Your skilled work of photographing my paintings never disappoints. I am always extremely satisfied and amazed at the quality and your ability to capture the painting down to the smallest detail. Thank you!
Hats off to Mitch Rossow Photography for shooting my completed nocturne paintings and somehow eliminating all the surface glare.
I am an oil painter working in the contemporary style of expressive realism. Mitch Rossow has been my photographer for a few years now, and I have nothing but glowing words to describe what it is like to work with him. His photos have captured accurately the gamut of color palettes that I use, whether the subject is an 8×10” Plein Air flower study, the subtle gradations in 30×40” sunrises over the ocean, or large 4×6’ studio paintings of Italian villages and vistas…
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I would recommend anyone who needs art photography to avail themselves of Mitch Rossow Photography. We have worked together for 10 years and in that time has photographed and catalogued all my paintings besides managing all my website duties.
He believes in quality and craft.
Over the years he has refined his process to such an extent that the usual problems of glare and delicate color balance are no longer an issue.
For me personally his ability to hit subtle neutral tones and extremely nuanced tonal transitions make him the only choice to work with. Personally he is a courteous, punctual and easy to work with – a true professional.
Joe Paquet
Hey Mitch, just wanted to let you know that I had that same large hats painting photographed by another photographer that you had done for me because I wanted to compare the results.
Yours is by far the better one.
The old method I had been relying on of going from transparency first and then to a scan is really pretty inferior now that I see them side by side.
Wish I’d had you photographing my works these past many years. Oh well, live and learn. Thanks!
Steven J Levin
I’ve tried to photograph my own work for years, and it never worked well. I couldn’t get the painting square, neither the color nor the detail could be captured properly, and they were barely usable for my portfolio and website.
I’ve also used professional scans of my paintings. While these turned out better than my personal photographs, details were often lost, the color wasn’t always accurate, and I had issues with banding when producing prints.
I’ve used several professional photographers that specialize in art documentation, including at local museums. None have come close to capturing the amount of detail and accuracy that Mitch achieves with his photographs.
Matthew Rucker
Mitch Rossow
Sprat, Horse Portrait