Fuller_Royal

Fuller Royal, M.Photog., Cr., F-Ph

Seniors: From Start to Finish

Course Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Fuller Royal brings 19 years of senior portrait experience to the East Coast School in August, 2008. From his small studio in small-town Whiteville, N.C. (population 5,700), he has photographed more than 1,700 high school seniors, spending an average of two hours with each in customized, unique portrait sessions.

Fuller’s class is all encompassing and will teach the nuts and bolts of creating a senior photography from scratch or ramping up an existing program.

On Sunday, Fuller will offer an overview of the upcoming week and then hit the ground running on how he markets and promotes his studio as the place in a seven-county area for the best senior photography.

He will share his materials and offer proven and tested methods for the best use of ambassadors, promotional pieces and the Internet.

On Monday, the entire day will be spent photographing four seniors. He will demonstrate clothing and background choices, posing techniques and how to make seniors feel at ease. He will demonstrate his award-winning, but simple lighting techniques and also how he creates various lighting effects for hi-key, green-screen and dramatic effect.

Students will experience studio and outdoor location work. They will see firsthand how, with the right lens, any outdoor location has great photographic potential.

On Tuesday, selected images photographed on Monday will be distributed to the students to use in their own computers. Tuesday is the beginning of 2-1/2 days of intense computer work.

Fuller will demonstrate quick ways to retouch and enhance images using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. He will demonstrate how he works with green screen, extraction, sharpening, blur and various plug-ins. He will demonstrate how he cleans up hi-key and creates composites and blends.

He will demonstrate how he creates the contemporary layered, textured look that seniors love and how he quickly charges the looks of his backgrounds.

If nothing else, the simple magic of seeing images transformed into competition worthy prints is worth the cost of the class.

As the course progresses, Fuller will incorporate the magic of Painter to create additional products for seniors. He will demonstrate QuickMats, a product he has used for five years to create his unique senior galleries.

On the last morning, Fuller will demonstrate how easy it is to create a senior coffee table book, a big seller in his studio. Students will create some marketing materials and see how simple creating a website and blog can be.

Fuller has been rehearsing for this class for seven years with senior and digital product classes in his studio. His sessions are fun, humorous and highly informative.

This senior class is for students who are comfortable with their digital cameras, their lights and have a good working knowledge of Photoshop. It is not a beginners’ class by any means. And participants should have fast computers with ample memory.

Fuller has his Fellowship Degree from the Professional Photographers of North Carolina, his Master of Photography Degree from the Professional Photographers of America as well as his PPA Photographic Craftsman Degree.

His senior portraits have won a Kodak Gallery Award and a Fuji Masterpiece Award. He has two PPA National Loan Prints and Five PPNC Loan Prints. His senior portraits have placed in PPNC and SEPPA competitions 15 times including seven first places.

You can see more of Fuller's work at www.royalportraits.com.