GrungePhotoshop.com

If you’re going to grunge up a photo of someone, make sure they’re not just smiling into the camera. They’ve either gotta be looking stone-cold cool, or they’ve gotta be doing something out of the ordinary. (Or altogether oblivious of the camera. That’s another strong approach.)

Try some candid shots (for some experimental shots, try walking around the city, shooting from the hip, catching interesting people who don’t know you’re grabbing their photo), and try getting some of your cooler-looking friends to just stare off into space, look pensive, act deranged. Take a lot of shots, and look for the ones that can really stand out in a grunge treatment.

Whatever you do, don’t let them just smile at you. That’s weird anyhow.

When an opportunity comes up to get some cool photos, you just have to grab ‘em. I had a chance to sit in at a quad rugby event (aka “Murderball”), where quadriplegics play rugby in battle-armored wheelchairs. It’s amazing to watch. And these guys are really, really cool. Cool to begin with, and cool in what they’re doing … but also really cool to photograph.