Slide #6
However, as his reputation grew, the walls slowly started to break down. “I literally came out of nowhere. I wasn’t allowed into a lot of places. People used to tell me strategic will never let you shoot at any of their venues. Now I’m shooting at Lavo a few times a month. Whenever someone told me I couldn’t shoot somewhere, I’d try to prove them wrong. Now there isn’t a place in the city I haven’t shot.”
His marketing prowess help set himself apart initially and it continues to help him expand his brand. “I built a name before the site with the ‘Kirillwashere’ cards. People wouldn’t even go to the site, but they recognized the logo. I made myself look bigger than I was” he says. “Now it’s a business, but initially I never treated it as one. I did a lot of favors and made a lot of friends. That got me access to places that no one else was allowed to shoot” He began shooting venues like Goldbar, 1OAK and SL, which were the hippest parties at the time.
They let him shoot because of the brand he cultivated. “I never made the club look bad. I cared about the party. I see other photographer’s shoot and they put up way too many photos. I know that as a guy going to a site I don’t want to look at a bunch of ugly chicks. It’s not rude, it’s good marketing.”
Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image. Sex sells and Kirill knows that first hand. His documenting of party girl’s breasts has become one of his site’s biggest draws.”I rarely will ask somebody to flash me, unless I’m blackout drunk. Most of the time, they just do it on their own. Its human nature, girls get drunk see a camera and want to have fun.” It seems to have started with people posing with his “KirillWasHere” business cards. “They just started putting them in their mouths and on their boobs. I’d instigate, but I never told them to do anything with them.” I mention the fact that many people consider it his trademark and he laughs “Ten of the three thousand photos a month that I post will be boob shots, but those are the ones that get all the hits”