Now put all of that into practice...

Recap - 

(1). You've written about research and explained what it is and why and how we do it.

(2). You've written about the need to reflect on your research and makes sense of it.

(3). You've written about the fact that once you've reflected on your research you then have to plan your first activity.

(4). You've written about having to produce an initial idea e.g. a first set of images/photoshoot.

(5). You've written about having to reflect on your practical activity (1st shoot) and analysing what you need to do next in order to develop your idea or skills so that the work improves.

(6). You've written about the fact that with this process you now repeat stages 3, 4 and 5 over a number of stages so that your skills, idea and the images improve shoot by shoot. 

That is the first stage of the work.

Since then you have made a start on the actual project itself. If you're reading this now, you should have completed your artist research  and collated a couple of pages of image research to help generate ideas and you would have planned your first shoot. 

Take your camera and spend some time taking pictures. Shoot loads, but keep it basic at this stage, maybe do the first shoot using your phone in order that you show development by using a DSLR on the 2nd shoot. 

You can go about this in 2 ways.

(1). You might have already had a good idea that you've come up with as result of doing all of your research and you might already be focused on what you need to do. You might have stumbled upon the barge wreck in the River Thames in Kent...

Image source - http://discoveringkent.weebly.com/seascapes.html

So all you now need to do is shoot it as your first shoot and get the images into your design sheet. 

(2). You might have several ideas and you might shoot a whole bunch of different things just to see what has the most potential. If you go about it this way, you need to quickly do this first shoot of lots of things and decide which idea/theme you're going go with and pursue and develop. 

keep on top of this - do it daily don't leave it.

As soon as you've shot the images - get them into your design sheets, include a contact sheet and at least a page of the best images - preferably 2 pages? Then write up your reflection.