An Exploratory Study of Factors that Relate to Burnout in Professional Photographers

Burnout is a state of exhaustion, which leads to paralysis of our forces, accompanied by a loss of feeling and joy about life. Nowadays, burnout is more frequent. This applies not only to the social professions which burnout was characterized above, but hobby-jobs as well. Despite the fact that now in Russia photography is the most popular profession, many people experience burnout, especially individuals who moved to professional photography from a hobby. The relationship with job demand factors, personality type and internal factors (hobby-job similarity, less time spend on hobby) with burnout phenomenon was investigated. In order to see how the change of job demands from a hobby to a profession influences the individuals and how their personality may help or hinder their resilience, the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) was used. The 16-item Oldenburg survey was used to measure two dimensions of burnout: exhaustion and disengagement. The variety was measured in 17-items Swedish Job-Demand-Control-Support (DCSQ) survey, with 4 dimensions: Psychological demand(5 items), Skill(4 items) Discretion,Decision latitude(2 items), Support( 6 items).Personality was measured using 10 items in the Big Five Model. In order to conduct the research, 180 professional photographers from Russia have been interviewed to collect better results and find the exact causes of the burnout problem. Findings suggest that job demands factors are the most predictors of burnout from the all of study variables. Also, personality traits and behavior, which is coming from the traits, may help to predict and protect individuals from the burnout or reduce the level of it. Keywords: burnout; job demands; personality traits.