Subscription box curators
You are selling this month's box before anybody has opened one.
Every month is a new product made of other people's products, and the reveal photograph has to carry the whole subscription.
Sized and staged for Shopify · Instagram
A subscription box is an unusual product: it does not exist until you assemble it, it is different every month, and the thing customers are actually buying is the anticipation of opening it.
That puts enormous weight on one photograph — the flat-lay of everything laid out, shot before a single box ships. It is the image that drives sign-ups, and it has to be produced in the narrow window between the last supplier delivery and the first dispatch, which is generally the busiest week of your month.
Why your photos are costing you sales
A flat-lay of eight items is the hardest kind of product photograph to take on a phone. Everything has to be lit evenly, nothing can cast a shadow on anything else, and the whole arrangement has to read at thumbnail size where subscribers first see it.
Most curators end up shooting on the packing table, from an angle, with a stack of flat-packed boxes visible at the edge of frame.
The scenes that suit your work
A handful chosen for what you sell, out of the full library.
It has to still be your item
The items in the box are real products belonging to other brands, and their labels and packaging matter as much as yours — a supplier will not thank you for a photograph in which their branding has been quietly redrawn. Altered label text and restyled packaging are both excluded on every generation.
Arrange the contents once, photograph from directly above, and the scene supplies the surface and the light.
- A styled reveal flat-lay without a props cupboard
- Supplier branding preserved, which keeps your partners comfortable
- The same look every month, so the feed reads as a series
- Wide banner crops for the sign-up page from the same shot
Three steps, about a minute
01
Upload your photos
Two or three angles on a phone is plenty. We cut the background automatically.
02
Pick your scenes
Tick as many as you like from 56 staged settings, or describe your own.
03
Get your shots
They arrive together in your gallery, ready to download for a listing or a post.
Questions people ask before they sign up
- Will the brands inside my box keep their labels?
- Yes. Altered label text is excluded on every generation, which protects your suppliers as much as you.
- How should I photograph a flat-lay?
- Directly above, everything visible, nothing overlapping too heavily. The arrangement is yours; the surface and the light get replaced.
- Can I keep the look consistent month to month?
- Use the same scene each month. Contents change, presentation does not, which is what makes a feed look like a subscription rather than a series of unrelated posts.
- Can I show the box closed as well as open?
- Photograph both. Most curators use a closed box for the listing and the flat-lay for the reveal.
Written for your trade
Practical pieces about photographing what you sell, rather than general advice about cameras.
Keeping twelve months of boxes consistent
A year of reveal photographs sits on your website as a grid. If each month was shot in a different room, that grid tells subscribers you improvise.
3 minute read
Photographing other people’s brands
Half of what is in your box was made by someone else, and their logo, their label and their packaging are in your photograph.
3 minute read
The reveal flat-lay, and why most of them fail
Everything laid out neatly around an open box is the defining image of the category. Done badly it looks like a car boot sale.
4 minute read
Also sells like you
You are selling this month's box before anybody has opened one.
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