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Adam's face has extraordinary contours even under bland lighting while he's sleek; add a strong directional light source and subtract a lot of his body fat and those contours become even more dramatic.
I had always wondered how Jack Davison had captured such extraordinary photos of Adam for the "Great Performers of 2019" cover and article that ran in the NYT on 14 Dec 2019. He used actual film, apparently, and played around with reflection, refraction, and distortion by using glass panes with some of the other actors featured.
No glass panes were used for Adam's photos; instead, the photographer chose to obscure his face with shadows, some cast by objects, but most cast by Adam's own features. I can always tell when a director is on the "Adam is hot" train with those of us in the Driver Hive, and it's equally clear when a photographer is too; in this case, I see it in how these photos celebrated Adam's features, rather than attempting to minimize them, even as Davison played a game of "how much of Adam's face can I hide before people can't easily recognize him".
The lighting is the antithesis of conventional portraiture lighting, which is soft, non-directional, and intended to eliminate deep shadows, averaging out unusually prominent features. Stark and unrelenting, this extremely directional light source unapologetically emphasizes the unique landscape of Adam's face, the prominences of his brow, nose, and cheekbone catching that light and casting deep shadows below them. And it turns out that light source, despite the deep black background behind him in the final photos, was none other than the sun, which looks to have been near it's zenith on a cloudless day.
A tiny clip from a behind-the-scenes peek at the process behind the photos in that article recently surfaced; in it, there's just a few frames of Adam, leaning forward, his elbows and forearms resting on his thighs, framed against the backdrop of that bright sky as a couple of men fuss with some equipment near by. Adam turns his head to look at them, and we get to see this.
It's very blurry, a product of both the fact that this is a frame from a motion camera and the focus of that camera (also a bit of the file size, too; it's not what I'd call 4k). But in a way, that lets us more easily appreciate the hills and hollows, crags and crevices, rumples and almost maybe dimples when not distracted by finer details. Despite how shaded his eyes are, it seems like he was squinting into the light; the lower lid of his left eye is pursed upward tightly, and his brows are knitted together just a bit. He's not frowning, but he's not smiling either, expression set in his "resting Hades face", which looks more even more severe given the austerity of his build at the time.
This would have been taken in late fall/early winter 2019, not long after Adam had done the shoot for Burberry Hero and played the sinewy shock-comic, Henry McHenry, in ANNETTE. Both of those projects called for him to be muscular but extraordinarily lean, and you can see how little subcutaneous fat he's carrying just by looking at the shaded hollows under the wide jut of his cheekbones. That lack of softness amplifies the already stern nature of Adam's rather forbidding non-expression.
Screenshot used for reference taken by adamdrivercentral from a short behind-the-scenes video clip of Jack Davison taking the photos for the New York Times Great Performers of 2019 article, which was shared by haste_nyc.If you'd like to know more about the techniques Mr Davison used to capture those photos, there's a great article about it here.
About 4 hours of work, but only because I made myself walk away. Blur is harder than you'd think! Don't ask how much of that time I spent on just his left eye, though I didn't have to fret much about skin textures and tiny details. Painted while listening to "The Unclouded Day", by Jozef Van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch, on repeat.
I had always wondered how Jack Davison had captured such extraordinary photos of Adam for the "Great Performers of 2019" cover and article that ran in the NYT on 14 Dec 2019. He used actual film, apparently, and played around with reflection, refraction, and distortion by using glass panes with some of the other actors featured.
No glass panes were used for Adam's photos; instead, the photographer chose to obscure his face with shadows, some cast by objects, but most cast by Adam's own features. I can always tell when a director is on the "Adam is hot" train with those of us in the Driver Hive, and it's equally clear when a photographer is too; in this case, I see it in how these photos celebrated Adam's features, rather than attempting to minimize them, even as Davison played a game of "how much of Adam's face can I hide before people can't easily recognize him".
The lighting is the antithesis of conventional portraiture lighting, which is soft, non-directional, and intended to eliminate deep shadows, averaging out unusually prominent features. Stark and unrelenting, this extremely directional light source unapologetically emphasizes the unique landscape of Adam's face, the prominences of his brow, nose, and cheekbone catching that light and casting deep shadows below them. And it turns out that light source, despite the deep black background behind him in the final photos, was none other than the sun, which looks to have been near it's zenith on a cloudless day.
A tiny clip from a behind-the-scenes peek at the process behind the photos in that article recently surfaced; in it, there's just a few frames of Adam, leaning forward, his elbows and forearms resting on his thighs, framed against the backdrop of that bright sky as a couple of men fuss with some equipment near by. Adam turns his head to look at them, and we get to see this.
It's very blurry, a product of both the fact that this is a frame from a motion camera and the focus of that camera (also a bit of the file size, too; it's not what I'd call 4k). But in a way, that lets us more easily appreciate the hills and hollows, crags and crevices, rumples and almost maybe dimples when not distracted by finer details. Despite how shaded his eyes are, it seems like he was squinting into the light; the lower lid of his left eye is pursed upward tightly, and his brows are knitted together just a bit. He's not frowning, but he's not smiling either, expression set in his "resting Hades face", which looks more even more severe given the austerity of his build at the time.
This would have been taken in late fall/early winter 2019, not long after Adam had done the shoot for Burberry Hero and played the sinewy shock-comic, Henry McHenry, in ANNETTE. Both of those projects called for him to be muscular but extraordinarily lean, and you can see how little subcutaneous fat he's carrying just by looking at the shaded hollows under the wide jut of his cheekbones. That lack of softness amplifies the already stern nature of Adam's rather forbidding non-expression.
Screenshot used for reference taken by adamdrivercentral from a short behind-the-scenes video clip of Jack Davison taking the photos for the New York Times Great Performers of 2019 article, which was shared by haste_nyc.If you'd like to know more about the techniques Mr Davison used to capture those photos, there's a great article about it here.
About 4 hours of work, but only because I made myself walk away. Blur is harder than you'd think! Don't ask how much of that time I spent on just his left eye, though I didn't have to fret much about skin textures and tiny details. Painted while listening to "The Unclouded Day", by Jozef Van Wissem and Jim Jarmusch, on repeat.
