Watch right here or read below!

I love flooring. I especially love how it can create a scene for photos when you shoot at a high angle or overhead and catch just the tiniest bit of it in a shot.

But for years, my floor was brown shag carpet. Not exactly the kind of thing that makes you ooh and ahh over a photo.

Even now, I would have loved to have some rustic concrete or hardwood in my rental studio, but I had to work with the landlord for the most affordable option. And that happened to be boring office carpet.

The solution? Using my favorite surfaces as stand-ins for flooring. And they don’t have to be that big. It just takes a little creativity and movement to capture some fun images and angles.

Let me show you some examples.

I love my 2x3 vinyl surfaces from Poppy Bee Surfaces. Last week, I was photographing artichokes and I really wanted to get a shot on the corner of the live edge table my husband and I made a few years ago. But, again, boring office carpet.

So I set this up:

When shooting overhead I had to adjust myself.

Too high and I catch the edge of the carpet and the rug. Too low and I caught the edge of the surface at the bottom. But zooming in and centering myself with the camera gave me the third and final shot.

Bigger boards take a bit less work, but you still have to capture the right angle. I shot this scene just last week. Laying my 4 x 4 pallet wall surface on the ground allowed me to capture these sangria shots.

And this shot you saw just last week in the email about Changing Your Angle. This is a vertical of the same scene. The chair is set on a sheet of black painted canvas. This is what it looked like before I cropped and edited for the final image on the right.