The VLA's ``Y'' layout gives an instantaneous synthesized beam with a respectable shape and sidelobe level. This makes it possible to do interesting science with only brief observations if the targets are both bright and compact. In what follows, I consider a single ``snapshot'' to be an observation of <5 minutes' duration. Snapshots of <1 minute duration may even be appropriate if you want to image many (> 1000) fields that are near to one another on the sky (so that antenna drive times are also short) and it does not matter if the occasional observation is abbreviated or even lost. Such observing can be ideal if you want to study the statistical properties of a large sample of small, bright sources (and also to overdose on synthesis image processing!).
Note that two extensive snapshot surveys are in progress using the VLA at L Band: the whole sky is being observed in the D configuration (the NVSS project), and the Sloan survey region (initially) is being observed in the B configuration (the FIRST project). The accumulating data from these two surveys are in the public domain and should be checked for overlap with any proposal for L-band snapshots in the B, C or D configurations.