White backgrounds .. please stop being boring

Over 80% of branding images are still shot on a plain white background.

Incredible that in 2025 with all the resources we have that is still the case.

Look you hire me to give your brand life, then with a white wall image it's stuff it into a sterile hospital ward. No context, no character, just a vacuum. It screams .. there's no imagination here so move on.

Then request by request everything else that grinds my gears starts to happen

Stage the I'll fold my arms, I'll look happy, I'll look say routine like it’s some fresh take on “real”

The email has a description dripping with corporate euphemisms scavenged from a thesaurus “approachable premium warmth”, let have "unvarnished defiant gritty"

Every time I snap there's a shout of "Let's see" no Susan, I'll show you if I want to but I don't want to interrupt the flow, put you in the wrong headspace.

There's a budget that couldn’t cover half my coffee tab. Let's talk about the elephant. Yep the big grey one that seems to be invisible. It's expensive to be me. It takes a lot of resource to deliver a photo that makes people move, that isn't a snap or a selfie. So yup the price is the price, it's set for a reason.

That's just the top five imagine what else is on the list.

The results ?

Your “on-brand” gallery becomes as memorable as Phil Collins in the mid 80s. Viewers scroll past in a beat, because they’ve seen this exact formula; white box, faux-authentic mug, marketing slogan on the side; on half a dozen other sites today.

You’ve created a visual equivalent of Nigel Normal, not a statement for Sally Showcase.

If you really want to keep pissing me off

sure, by all means, cling to the death-box comfort zone, bring me all the Pinterest bland you can find, drown the energy in jargon, micromanage every aspect of composition, and starve the project on budget.

Knock yourself out. Just don’t be surprised when your images vanish into the scroll abyss.