Money Shot

Travis Swanson sits between two twentysomething models on his black leather couch in the home he rents in Overland Park's gated Jefferson Pointe neighborhood. The women are his newly hired go-go dancers. He met them on MySpace.com.

Emily Trimmell, an animated brunette with a blinding white smile, works as an Estée Lauder makeup artist. Cassie Whatley, a University of Kansas student with ass-length blond hair and braces, wears a white lacy blouse and curls her legs under her to ward off the chill of Swanson's blasting air conditioner.

"It's a great idea to do this. We need someone to start something big around here," Trimmell says.

Whatley and Trimmell will work for 26-year-old Swanson's Web site, RevealMagazine.com, which features pictures of regular people out at popular nightspots such as Club NV and Blonde. His goal is to someday turn Reveal into a print magazine.

Swanson recently secured a cross-promotion gig by throwing a party called "Flirt" every Friday night at NV, a downtown bar trying to shake free of its former gay-club reputation. Swanson gets half of the $5 cover for providing promotion and buzz on his site. Hence, the go-go dancers, who are to appear every Friday night.

"It works out great for them because I bring the people they [NV's ownership] want in there. And it works out great for me because, if the place holds 1,600 people —you do the math," Swanson says.

"He's, like, a genius when it comes to this stuff," Whatley says.

"And it's cool to be part of it now, to kind of have some ownership in getting something like this off the ground," Trimmell adds.

Swanson hopes his audience will buy into the idea that wherever he is, the beautiful people are, too. The shots on RevealMagazine.com feature women with ironed-flat hair and strappy, cleavage-boosting tops, and guys with button-down striped shirts that barely contain gym-pumped biceps. They match the site's slogan: "The hottest clubs. The hottest people. Period."

Then there's the elusive royal flush of nightlife photography: a shot of two chicks kissing. Swanson described it in an e-mail to the Pitch: "I think a lot of girls over the years have experienced their first bi-sexual experiences with cameras in their face. I'm always taking pictures of girls groping each other and making out. Then there's always the response, ‘I can't believe we did that,' giggle giggle."

Starting a business around nightlife photography was as simple for Swanson as walking into a club armed with a camera and building a Web site full of photos of sweaty young women. He sells membership to the site for $6.99 a month, though nonmembers can browse some areas for free. His goal is 5,000 members by the end of the year, but he won't reveal how many members he has so far.

Swanson belongs to an ever-expanding category of nightlife entrepreneurs who post to the Internet pictures they've taken at bars and events. There's Phocas.net, KCXposed.com ,WildKC.com and FACE Magazine, the only one to make it to print, though it's on hiatus. Lately, any Kansas Citian who frequents clubs has a fair chance of ending up pictured — wittingly or not — on a Web site.

Kansas City paparazzi aspire to the recognition of their cosmopolitan peers. In New York City, one of the best-known late-night shutterbugs calls himself Bronques and runs a site called Lastnightsparty.com. His pictures show glossy-lipped, glassy-eyed hipsters floating on a sea of blackness, faces illuminated by the camera's flash. The popularity of his site has even made something of a celebrity of Bronques himself, who flamboyantly dons a raven-colored bob wig and peppers his speech with French phrases.

Swanson is looking for Bronques' level of recognition. Swanson's family moved to Olathe from California when he was 10. His dad owns a computer company, and his mom works for Greenies, the local pet treat company. Swanson started his Reveal Web site in December 2003 after he got sick of working for Sprint. He also was in the midst of legal troubles. While he developed his business, Swanson was under house arrest for violating probation from an aggravated burglary charge. Even house arrest couldn't keep him away from clubs, though. He says of his criminal record, "I think it gives me some street cred because I've been through adversity, I've overcome adversity and I can relate to so many different people."

For weeks, Swanson hyped the biggest Flirt Friday yet at NV, a so-called "5-State MySpace Party" that he has tirelessly trumpeted on the Web. He once changed the coding on his MySpace page so that he appeared to have 2 million friends. So far, he claims that 450 people have RSVP'd —80 percent of whom are women. Swanson has outsourced the job of taking pictures to a volunteer and a guy from Omaha working for gas money to get to Kansas City. Swanson also hired a camera operator for $100 to shoot a Reveal video to be posted online and distributed at other events. He'll pay his go-go dancers $80, plus free drinks and seats on the party bus, which will pick up Swanson's entourage at his Overland Park home.