And this is why we can't have nice things.

The other day I was lucky enough to run a Natural Light Portrait Workshop on Dartmoor as part of the Dartmoor Preservation Association's Partnership programme.

The events are all free, you just need to book your spot on Eventbrite.

The twelve places were fully booked up over a month before the day of the event. A week or so before the day, one lady emailed to say she (and her partner) would be unable to attend due to work commitments. I did a post mentioning there were spaces left and we managed to find another person to fill one spot.

So, eleven people had booked a place.

Four turned up.

The four were wonderful and I hope everybody enjoyed themselves. We had good light, great conversation, and a lovely unhurried session aided by the brilliant Helen from Dartmoor Preservation Association who took on the role of model with aplomb!

There’s a cap on these types of outdoor workshops for a reason. It’s not at all arbitrary. You might know that as well as being a photographer, I’m also a Hill & Moorland Leader and besides the inherent problem of herding photographers, there’s also the safety issue, making sure that everybody involved is looked after and doesn’t come to any harm.

It’s sometimes called a “duty of care”.

Talking of “care” and “duty” …

It means that for every person who booked and didn't bother to come along (or even let us know), someone else who might have wanted the spot (and even enjoyed it) didn't get it. There were weeks to refill vacant spots.

Seven of those eleven didn't show up. None of them messaged to say they wouldn’t be able to make it. None of them cancelled. They simply weren't there.

This pisses me off.

As with everything I’ve ever attempted on Dartmoor, I always try really hard to involve other people, either in enjoying photography or just getting outdoors.

I spent a great deal of thought, time and money setting up the walk.

I’d visited prior to the walk (I’d even roped in a good friend to help me learn more about the area so I’d know more about the history and the geography).

I put together a costume, I sourced props and gathered many extra “bells and whistles” to make the walk as memorable and enjoyable as possible.

I drove almost an hour there and back (on the day, and on my recon day).

Was it worth the effort? No.

Will I be doing it again? No.

This isn't personal. It's evidence based.

This isn't because I’m unlucky - though it sometimes feels like that.

The behavioural economics on free events is scientifically proven.

Industry data across many thousands of activities shows that free events have “no-show” rates between fifty to sixty percent, while paid events sit at only three to five percent.

I knew nothing of this phenomenon until I had taken part in the portrait workshop (and if I had, I’d probably not have spent even a single minute preparing).

The same people, behaving entirely differently, depending on whether or not they had to part with anything to be there.

I’ve since discussed this with people who run free events and they tell me this is standard; it's the rule; not the exception.

It even has a name.

The “Zero Price Effect”

In 2007, Shampanier, Mazar and Ariely published a paper in Marketing Science describing what they called the Zero Price Effect. This is the irrational overvaluation of free things, and then the curious behaviour that follows on from it.

When something costs nothing, people don't spend any time whatsoever weighing up whether they want it. They take it anyway.

They book a spot to keep their options open.

In the back of their minds, they never quite intended to come. The free thing isn't really a choice, it's a placeholder, in case nothing better turns up.

So were the seven being malicious?

Evidence would suggest they were being entirely typical. That, frankly, is what bothers me.

That’s what’s wrong with the world.

I’m a bit odd (I’m sure that won’t surprise anybody) and quite a long time ago, I started systematically recording when somebody pissed me off as I set about trying to make my hobby my business. It seems that time and time again, most people only want to know you when it benefits them. Even this wouldn’t be so bad if this attitude hadn’t slowly and surely seeped into every facet of modern day life.

I’ve always only ever wanted to build something for myself where I can perhaps make a little more than minimum wage doing something I love, instead of doing something mind numbingly dull for some rich idiot. I’ve had enough of spending so much time listening to people who have never thought for themselves and seem to be vexed as to why they should have to pay people enough money to be able to afford to live in this increasingly terrible world.

People who only seem to appreciate you and only realise you exist when they have to pay to replace you.

I want to make people happy, I want to give people the chance to enjoy the outdoors or to flourish as photographers. I want to do all this and I’m not bothered about making vast sums of cash or having people think I’m wonderful.

Then you find out that people can’t even be bothered to let you know they won’t be turning up?

People (it seems) deserve nothing.

The "Free" Sign-Up Is Driven by Affect, Not Commitment

Our eleven people that signed up likely did so on a whim, swept up by the emotional appeal of a "free" day on Dartmoor. Their decision was emotional, and not rational.

The same goes for believing that immigrants are the reason everything in your life is terrible. This doesn’t in any way diminish any real problems people might have in their lives (or that those problems aren’t caused by something or somebody), it merely points out that emotion alone is not the perfect tool to use to make decisions on complex issues.

There's a fairly decent chance the previous sentence annoyed you. If it did, that's worth you sitting with it for a second; not because your annoyance proves me right (it doesn't, and anyone who tells you a hostile reaction is evidence of their own correctness is running a con … or is a politician), what it does mean is the annoyance itself is evidence (data, if you will). Not about immigrants, not about me, or whatever annoyed you. Data about you.

In a similar way, not turning up and not telling anybody you won’t turn up, is also data.

The Affect Heuristic

Psychologists have a name for when we feel first and reason afterwards: the affect heuristic.

The feeling arrives in milliseconds; the justification for the feeling turns up later, dressed up as logic, having already decided where it's going.

We don't weigh the evidence and then arrive at a feeling. We have the feeling and then go shopping for evidence that flatters and confirms it. Ziva Kunda called the second half of that “motivated reasoning”, and once you've noticed yourself doing it, you’ll not be able to stop seeing yourself doing it.

The trouble is that the more a belief is wrapped up in who you think you are, the harder it fights to survive. If anybody challenges it (including yourself) - you don't get a calm recalculation … you get heat.

The heat feels like conviction. It feels like “I know this must be true because it matters so much”.

But the strength of a feeling tells you how much of yourself is invested in a belief. It tells you nothing whatsoever about whether the belief is true.

So I'm not asking you to agree with me. I'm asking you to notice the gap between the reaction and the thinking; and then to spend a moment in that gap before you decide which one you're going to trust.

So, back to our seven, they felt a "gain" with no perceived "cost," so they signed up without weighing the actual effort required to travel to Haytor or the time and commitment involved. They will also, no doubt, have a “very good reason” for not turning up, or even feeling it unnecessary to let us know they wouldn’t be attending.

The price they do pay is they can now take a step back and maybe see that this does affect people.

I was already disillusioned with trying to help people.

I’m a very insular, introvert who still tries really hard to be gregarious in person and generous with my time, because I want to believe that people are fundamentally good. I’m beginning to see why people don’t bother.

The actual politics in this country and the macro “politics” involved in making your way when you try and start a small business with a great idea and a big heart, means I’m leaning more and more towards the idea that human beings are fucking idiots and the crappy state of the world is as much to do with people “not bothering” as it is to do with liars with billions of pounds peddling misinformation to distract from the truth.

If any of the seven read this they will have to engage the emotional side of their psyche in the way it should function. Here’s a special message, designed to press those same buttons those billionaires use : Fuck you!

**Special mention here that I am also well aware that the same “motivated reasoning” is most likely taking place in my own mind - in my defence, I have real solid evidence; gathered over decades; that suggests (maybe that my “rich idiot” attitude might be a little reductive) but it’s also more true than not.

Not having any "Skin in the Game"

Anybody with the barest grasp of economic theory knows that if the cost of an item drops, demand increases. However, Ariely’s work shows that lowering the price to zero creates a discontinuity. The psychological "pain of paying" is the primary mechanism that creates “commitment” and “accountability”.

The Cost of Cancellation

When an event has a price (even a very small one), the act of not showing up feels like a financial loss. This creates psychological pressure to attend.

How to Mitigate This in the Future

Researchers suggest that introducing a nominal fee can drastically improve show-up rates without reducing overall demand significantly.

How this works : A small fee shifts the interaction from a purely emotional/social exchange to a hybrid one. It introduces a small "pain of paying" that forces the registrant to stop and think: "Is this worth two quid?"

If they say yes, they are making a rational commitment, not an emotional impulse. This tiny cost acts as a filter, removing the "freebie hunters" while retaining those genuinely interested

In the context of Dartmoor, where access is often free and public, this effect is particularly potent. The "zero price" of the landscape itself probably contributed to the casual attitude toward the event, as participants subconsciously grouped it with other "free" public goods where being a no-show carries no personal penalty.

The cost of a free thing

So, there’s no such thing as a free workshop.

Someone always pays for it.

For this walk, the bill was split between me: my preparation, my morning, the diesel, the gear, the planning, the construction of a costume, the gathering of props, the checking the route beforehand, the numerous ideas and generally thinking through how I would approach the day: and the Dartmoor Preservation Association, who fund the Partnership programme as part of their work to protect and promote the moor.

We both had to absorb the cost of seven people deciding (at some point between booking on Eventbrite and that Wednesday morning) that they obviously had something way better to do and just couldn't be arsed to let anybody know.

And, of course, there are the people you don't see in this story: the ones who might have wanted those seven spots.

The Partnership programme exists to widen access to Dartmoor.

Every speculative “well it’s free, so I’ll book up and go along if nothing better comes up” from some thoughtless, selfish individual is a door slammed in the face of someone who might have walked through, given half a chance.

In my humble (and regularly ignored) opinion, the sheer entitlement shown in taking something from another person and showing zero embarrassment or even the vaguest social discomfort is galling to say the least.

That's the bit that genuinely annoys me. Not the disrespect to me (I’m becoming increasingly used to people misunderstanding that “nice” and “friendly” and “helpful” does not; and has never meant “stupid”) I can absorb yet another wasted day or two on my journey of discovery.

The real disrespect is to the next person, the one I will now never meet and the one who will probably never meet me or ever experience something which I truly hope can be inspirational.

I’ve seen what happens on the moor, and time and time again, I get to see that there seems to be a hierarchy of who gets to do what and the types of people involved in these events. I’m no social economist, but seems to me that a great deal of supposed “free thinking” deeply spiritual types are actually conceited upper middle class assholes.

As I’ve mentioned, over the years I’ve been quietly collating how people treat me. The guy who takes free photographs (because, frankly, I love to create, it makes my life better and it’s scientifically proven to keep you younger and live longer) I could spend my free time sat on my ass eating cake and watching umpteen crap TV shows or going to the pub and pretending I’m interested in football, but I don’t … I create.

Maybe not stuff that anybody gives a shit about (see article here) but that’s not why I do it!

To those people, next time you are let down by somebody or you decide you want to complain about people’s “lack of respect” take a long good hard look in the mirror!

I’ve tried, time and time again to get people involved in working together for some (obviously ridiculous and naïve idea of community) and yes, I’m well aware that I have a marketing budget of zero pounds, and I’m also not lucky enough to have worked in any high paying job that’s given me the necessary financial reserves or been blessed to have inherited money. I’m done pretending people are mostly nice.

Why we can't have nice things

This is the bit where I'm going to start building on a thought I'll come back to in future pieces, because it definitely deserves more space than I'm giving it here. This idea has been developing in my mind for some time and the walk the other day is just the proof of it.

Dartmoor has always been shaped by people who could afford to shape it. Royalty, landowners, the commissioners, the writers and painters and poets who arrive with a particular idea of what the moor should be.

Those who can afford to be a part of the discussion.

The voices we don't hear so much from are the ones who actually lived here, worked here, walked here without making a fuss about it.

Those without any “higher” agenda.

I want to write more about them and the idea that the moor just “is” and doesn’t have to be forever a square peg being forced into a round hole to suit whatever objective is on brand this month.

I think this matters.

Because the photography I make is in some small way an attempt to listen to what the louder voices missed.

The same dynamic plays out in miniature on a Wednesday morning at a free workshop.

The people who can afford; culturally, and maybe financially; to treat other people's labour as disposable are doing something quite specific.

They are exercising a small, casual entitlement. They have been raised, or have moulded their personalities, on the assumption that commitments are provisional and that other people's time is abundant.

They book the GP appointment they don't need, the restaurant table they might use, the free workshop they're not sure about. They abuse people “beneath” them and put on a façade around their “social equals”.

Then they don't show up, and they don't tell anyone, because the social contract that most of us would have presumed was obvious, doesn’t apply to them.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Not because nice things can be expensive (most of the best things are free) but because the quiet agreement that holds them together has frayed.

The Partnership programme is a nice thing.

The DPA's willingness to fund free access to Dartmoor expertise is a nice thing.

Four people having an unhurried morning on the moor with their cameras is, genuinely, a nice thing.

It works only as long as people show up.

So.

From this point on, I’ll no longer offer any free workshops or walks. I'll continue to support things like the Dartmoor Preservation Association's Partnership programme (they do important work, and the no-show problem is theirs to solve through whatever booking mechanisms they choose).

But the workshops, portrait shoots and guided walks I run under my own name will always carry a price from now on.

Will this affect anybody?

No, because I have zero marketing budget and nobody hears about what I’m attempting to do and most of those who do think it’s not worth paying for anyway.

If that disappoints anyone, I'd gently suggest they think about why.

I tried to run a group to encourage people to meet up and share their photography expertise and experiences and mostly that failed.

I kept getting people message me about doing certain walks. I knew they were photographers who just wanted a free guide to a spot they hadn’t been to, and if I’m honest, their crappy excuses for not appearing at other organised walks were weak to say the least.

I try not to be a bitter person, but I am losing that battle.

People are pathetic.

I’m nice not stupid.

Do I want to be writing this? No.

As I’ve mentioned here (several times) I’ve slowly been collecting information on my journey to become a paid photographer and I intend to share what I’ve learnt. It’s also opened my eyes to the way many things in life function and that’s also something I want to investigate as it affects Dartmoor.