Instant V-Flat

On another 10-minute lunch break photo session, I was able to enlist another co-worker, Robert, who was gracious enough to help me practice my portraiture by patiently sitting or standing in front of the camera.

A few minutes before the session I looked around his cubicle area to find a suitable background and found a plain, gray wall. As I scanned the area, I got a light bulb moment when I thought the end corner of that wall could double as an impromptu V-flat.


I've only watched videos of professionals using V-flats for high key photography by using two 4x8 white boards called "coroplast", that's held up and formed into a "V". They use it to bounce flash into it so the light collects and blasts outward to the subject.

The inspiration for this light bulb moment of mine came from an article on V-Flats at Digital Photography School, where the model was placed inside and the flash firing into the V-flat filling the background with intense light.

Here's the setup using an SB-20 speedlight on a remote trigger:

Impromptu V-Flat Setup

Impromptu V-Flat Test Fire

Here's my test shot of Robert on that corner without the flash firing. I cropped out the wall's corner seam so it doesn't look like there's a line sticking out of his head.

Impromptu V-Flat, no flash

And here's the flash firing. Some of the light bled through the sides but it made for some cool effect, in my opinion.

Impromptu V-Flat with flash, post processed in LR and PS.

One thing to note on this high-key shot though is that I only had one flash so the first exposure that came out was Robert's face totally under-exposed and the background lit as I expected. This was one of those days when I wished I brought an extra flash to expose my subject. But this V-Flat experiment was unexpected so I wasn't too hard on myself.

I had to expose for ambient light (which was really dim), so I opened up the aperture as wide as it could go, in this case it was f3.3 on a Nikkor 35-70mm lens, and a slow shutter speed. Even on a tripod, I still ended up with a not so sharp photo.

Overall, I liked the results on the high-key portion of the shot. I can work on sharpness next time by coming prepared with an extra flash. I may invest on those 4x8 coroplast boards in the future but until then, I'll be keeping my eye out for inside corner walls painted white or gray to use as stand-in flats.