Inside Bryan Adams’ New Photography Book, ‘Exposed’

On a sun-drenched day in Los Angeles in 2006, Adams asked the pop star to change the location of the shoot, moving her to an upstairs area where the sunlight was better. "I just looked at Pink and said, 'Let's go upstairs,'" he recalls. As for how she ended up topless? "I dunno," he adds, laughing. "It just happened."

Before the actress got on all fours and gazed seductively at Adams, Lindsay Lohan had already completed a photo shoot with him in New York on that same day in 2007. "I said, 'Maybe we should do another,'" Adams remembers. Lohan agreed, lit a cigarette, slipped on red stilettos and got down in a tiger-like crouch. "She's great to work with," he adds. "Really easy."

On a 2005 morning in Rome, Morrissey was prepping for a photo shoot with Adams when the photographer caught him out on a balcony, deep in a moment of contemplation. "At the time, I was shooting with a Rolleiflex camera, which is really quiet," Adams explains. "I don't know if he knew I was starting. I saw [the moment] and it was there. It seemed like a beautiful picture."

A close friend and frequent photography subject of Adams, Amy Winehouse visited him and his family over Christmas 2007 on the private Caribbean island of Mustique. One day was spent teaching Winehouse how to drive. "Luckily, the Land Rover had a hand brake," Adams says with a chuckle. "The concept of braking wasn't something that Amy could quite grasp." Winehouse also graces the book's back cover.

In 2006, Adams learned that Pete Doherty's band, the Libertines, were playing in a parking lot in London. "I couldn't get anywhere near him," he recalls. "But just for a second, he wandered off and went and grabbed his hat and put it on," giving the photographer enough time to snap a candid. "I just happened to be right there," he says. "I don't think he even knew."

"As sweet as a nut." That's how Adams describes the notoriously difficult Billy Idol, with whom the photographer spent an entire day in 2008. The two camped out in a Fifties-style Airstream trailer; in one instance, Adams caught the punk rocker swigging a cold one. "It was like Billy's own trailer park," he recalls.

In 2010, Adams took Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser, the core members of South African shock-rap duo Die Antwoord, to an abandoned New York alley. He also brought along four-legged extras. "I hired some rats," he says, explaining one's guest-starring role in a shot of the duo. "It was totally planned."

Only days after her much-scrutinized performance on Saturday Night Live, Lana Del Rey stepped into a room full of mirrors that Adams had constructed for her at his London residence. He hoped the set would show "something so beautiful being reflected so many times." As he explains, "Del Rey was quite upset by the criticism people had poured on her, but it was soon washed away when my baby walked in the room."

"Mick is the greatest frontman of all time," Adams says, reflecting on his 2008 photo session in New York with the 69-year-old Rolling Stones singer. "There's nobody better. He wants you to capture him. There's never a moment of resistance. A lot of people in the music business could learn from him."