Guildford Inside Out - Conceptual plan for Assignment 5

In summary the requirements for Assignment 5 are:-
a. To write a brief for a photographic assignment for a notional client.
b. To complete the specified assignment producing 8 - 12 photographs
c. To write a short assessment comprising
     - the brief for the assignment
     - a statement setting out what were the plans for taking the photographs
     - information on the difficulties and opportunities encountered and how well the assignment succeeded.
d. To show judgement in the selection of the final images.
As anticipated in the previous posting on this blog, the brief I wrote stipulated the objective as: "to create and supply the images and preliminary text for eight to ten double pages" for a book with the working title "Guildford Inside Out". Each double page layout would require one square or horizontal framed image in colour suitable in quality for an A4 size double page. The photographs should illustrate an insiders view of the idiosyncrasies of life for the inhabitants of Guildford in a lively way. A list of suggested topics was included, but I was to develop ideas for presenting a selection of 8 - 10 topics from this list.
My approach to this assignment has been flexible. First in terms of timing, as I have been away relatively often in the past few months. As a result, most of the photography has been spread over a period of almost 5 months from January to May 2013. Second in the development and testing of ideas. Some of the locations or events were fruitful in terms of photographs, whereas others were less successful due to poor timing, poor photographic technique, low turn out and so on.
I prioritized the locations and events that I thought would be most likely to succeed visually, namely, activities in the High Street, sporting events and University of Surrey. I decided that several of the potential topics, e.g. traffic problems, local government, character of neighbourhoods and the influence of the outskirts would be difficult to illustrate photographically. I kept these in the back of my mind, in case something cropped up unexpectedly that I could use.
For the priority areas, I researched locations and events and scheduled one or more visits for photography. I collected the photos that I thought had potential using Lightroom "collections". Having collected about 40 images and being aware that there is about a month to July 21st the time limit that I stated in the photography brief, I decided it was time to work on the assignment submission. I selected the 10 best images and drafted a short narrative to provide the text for these sections of the notional publication, Guildford Inside Out.
I have spent about a week editing and refining these images, creating the page layouts and printing each one in the final form. This has also entailed expanding my knowledge of Photoshop, in particular the use of layers for editing and creating page layouts.
I appreciate that this approach is totally different to that of a commercial photographer or photojournalist working to a very specific brief on a tight deadline. There are, on the other hand, photographers who undertake quite open ended assignments in terms of timing and output. As I do photography for pleasure rather than as a profession, this open ended approach seemed reasonable in the circumstances.