Corporate Insights with Ms. Mahima Ruhela from ZopSmart

I’m Prajwal Singh (Batch 2025–27, IIBS Bangalore), and attending the guest talk with Ms. Mahima Ruhela from ZopSmart was truly insightful.

From understanding real corporate dynamics to exploring HR challenges, growth opportunities, and the difference between startups and established companies. Ma'am session gave us a clear, practical perspective of the professional world.

An engaging and eye-opening experience that connected classroom learning with real industry expectations.

“Beccy Strong came to photography after an international career in broadcast film and documentary.  She now works with Photography, film and sound.

Recently completing a Masters in Photography at Plymouth University her work broadly explores questions about our changing relationship to nature and the impact that is having, both internally and externally in the landscape and world around us.

With an interest in photography, psychology and myth the work is also underpinned by an exploration of the visual notions of the Anthropocene: “a term given to a new era on Earth in which technologically induced changes to the planet wrought by humans have had an acute and often irreversible effect on its geology…The beginning of the Anthropocene (the term derived from from Greek and means ‘the recent age of man’) is debatable – one party argues for its coinciding with the beginning of agriculture 8000 years ago; another with the invention of the steam engine in the 18thcentury. Some prefer the the middle of the 20thCentury, specifically the testing of the first atomic bomb, or NASA’s ‘blue marble’ photograph of earth.” Hester Keijser”  -  Beccy Strong’s Website 

What interests me the most about Beccy’s work is her story of how she came to getting into photography, her work in the past being somebody that films documentary of wildlife is so inspirational and deep as a film maker that she couldn't just stop there. Although her photography is more of a personal note as she captures her 13 year son, it still has a beautiful atmosphere. In the photo above she tells us of the tragic story behind it, saying “A boy in my town was high of of legal highs was tripping, went swimming in the river where my son plays sometimes, drowned.” her photography I believe reflects her life and feelings that she has because it is so personal.

Sian Davey, a local photographer from Totnes, kickstarted a series of her family circle and friends, with a beautiful aesthetic feel to her photos she cherishes simple life, capturing it at any given moment. The way she uses almost a 60′s freedom vibe draws me in, bringing light and shadows in her photos. She emphasised was that we needed to work from our feelings and not our heads as she began to talk about the natural moments of perfectness that occur when she captures her characters. 

I personally love her photographs as she takes the perspective of a mothers view at her children and community.  Before Sian Davey became a photographer, she worked as a psychotherapist, running her own private practice for 15 years, I believe that this effects her motives and the way she thinks about her own photographs. With four children she captures the innocence of adolescence and the period of time between childhood and adulthood. By capturing the growing stages of her kids she releases a free feel to the image.

Looking for Alice

Davey photographed her daughter Alice as mothers do on her everyday life, Alice (her fourth child) has down syndrome, the series explains how Alice goes about everyday life showing she is no different from any other child, the series is very eye opening and documents how her daughter is growing up and interacting with the world despite her disability. Davey is not only spreading a message of self care and love but also to be nice to others around you. 

Martha

Sian Davey was asked to take pictures of her other daughter Martha due to a little jealousy over Sian always taking pictures of her youngest Alice, leading to a beautiful series of work on the teenage form. Martha was sixteen when her mother began to photograph her, “A time when a child is not on that cusp of being or becoming a women” she states. She says the work affected her in a way of becoming of age and the realisation that Martha is no longer a little girl and on the road to womanhood.

The interior designer Oliver Heath ( @oliver-Heath) (Humanspaces.com) came in for a talk about his recent works and his reason for doing so. His work is all about biophillia ( a love of nature ) so this means that his work is all about the science and style of biophillic design. Its not about impressing others but improving mental and physical health, we are becoming more urbanised but more stressed. It is natural for us ‘humans’ to have a natural drawn attraction to nature and natural processes, and this is what the biophillic design principles work around. (Listening whilst I’m sat in a dark, small window room, how ironic) 

http://www.marcprust.com

- Marc is from Amsterdam and works as a photography consultant and curator

- He is interested in what a photograph can say and express – doesn’t take photographs

- Dogists – gets paid to take pictures of dogs 

- Having a strong social media audience is important but as marc suggests it is becoming harder and harder for freelance photographers to be the best in this position – hence the low wages for editorial jobs

- Matta clark sculpter – splitting 1974 cut houses in half saw when 17 “Changed his life”

- Runs a record label called buncefield record and tapes Specializes in records that do things

- Taught himself coding – way around playing with computers and hacking cameras

- Raul posse – underwater diver; sent image to adam – asking other people what to do with it A) More of a record lable

- Quite perfomative with it – you can mix the decks similar to an actual record (musical)

- Tried a kickstarter campaign but not many people understood it

- Photographers gallery

- Radio station – Radio Buncefield – based on the idea that photographic images can be broken down into pixelled data and if you were to sit down and read a photograph it would sound something like this (shows example)

http://www.danielalexanderphotography.co.uk

- The course director of Digital Photography BA (hons) and Photography BA (hons)

When war is over: PHOTO BOOK - Was an attempt to use photography design and text to convey a number of people 1,7 mil of people 1.7 mil deaths

 - The project grew out of a commission called lettering and process

- During research came across archive of common wealth war graves commission

- Throughout the book text is written and some is taken from the document by Frederick Kenyon who was the director of the British war museum, (war graves) how the cemeteries abroad will be designed

- Shot on 5x4 film to medium format digital

- Wholes on rocks are made to trim down and make into head stones but Daniel found they looked like machine gun holes

-  Project done over 6 years

- Wanted the work to look and feel contemporary and not nostalgic

- Smashed headstones have a similar lifespan to those buried in the graves

- Construction of frommels cemetery - time lapse

- Pheasant wood cemetery

- Series of stills from the time lapse in the book

- Shot so it could be exhibited but also for a book

- Use of tilt shift camera for memorial plaques

-An insert of different paper stock

- Contains many gatefolds

CEMETERIES AND EPITAPHS

Went to art college but his real background was in writing and early on knew he wanted with the museums. Museums and galleries were the amazing environment for the artist and something easily accessible.

Martin has worked for staggering 20 years at the V&A. He is interested in helping and producing exhibitions for others to see. Barnes regards museums and galleries as an incredible resource of history and art and to be something inspired by. Martin also works with artists to help them put on exhibitions.

Martin touches up on the history of V&A: it was first museum in the world that started collecting photographs back in 1852. When V&A began collecting photographs they were separated into two types: useful - an images that documented from building to art and could be studied, and fine art - that were art pieces of their own. The museum also offers an extensive collection of photographs and actual casts of places that you would normally have to travel to see; museum exhibits replicas of statues and even doorways alongside photographs. In 1858 V&A held first ever in the world photography exhibition and the museum owns an original photograph of the exhibition itself.

The kinds of images that V&A was acquiring were landscapes, nude studies and still life. These subjects were validated in fine art and photography was trying to tackle same subjects. Barnes also mentioned that photographs at the V&A are treated the same that paintings and and sculptures would; they are valuable not as a photographs alone but as an objects with great history in time. As a curator Martin is profoundly interested in finding about more about the photographs he is working with.