Artificial Breakfast

f/5.6 at 1/40th sec. ISO 100 using my 
50mm Nikkor f1.8G

Still life is one of my favorite ways to stay engaged with my camera in between photo shoots and travel. Unlike working with models or the public; still life photography is an exercise in total control. Everything in the image is an expression of the artist's will.

That being said, all of my still life images are the result of a building process that takes anywhere from minutes to hours. This photo, titled Artificial Breakfast, was born from a photograph of a raw egg in a cocktail glass.

I find recurring themes emerging in my photography. Themes of expiration versus permanence, youth, majesty, sexual identity and gender identification pop up here and there without my deliberation.


In tandem with said themes I push every still life towards a narrative. The audience is never far from my thinking when I work and, at least to me, an egg in some stemware doesn't really hold much interest. But the plastic breakfast of some wrecked, celebrity obsessed and psychically wounded creature.....that tells a story & invites the viewer to ask questions and interact with the image.

Mark William Mills Images