Feed me! There’s a rather loud great tit family who pass by every so often. The two young ones demand to be fed by excitedly flapping their wings and twittering away.

Tickets secured! I’ve got tickets to go and see the Nunkie Theatre Company’s production of M.R. James’ “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad” at Great Livermere Church, Suffolk. James grew up in Livermere and his father was vicar at the church, so you don’t get much more of a homecoming gig than this.

Front room #1. We got the decorators in to finish the house off as we were advancing at a snail’s pace ourselves. They’ve made a really good job of it. This is the front room — now we’ve got to move all the furniture and books back in.

My weekly photo project has taken a bit of a bash recently due to various study and other commitments. To be honest I lost count of where I’d got, so here are two I took today. The first is of Bankside by the Tate Modern, using the zoom technique thing and the second was taken inside the Tate. Despite it looking like a photo I took entirely by accident, I did actually mean to take it. Not sure if I really like it, but I do like the way the word “Alchemy” seems to jump out.

17/52: 18/04/09 [Phone box, Betchworth], originally uploaded by reynard.

I went for a lovely walk from Dorking to Reigate yesterday. It was a nice break from revision, or more specifically worrying about how little revision I’ve done for my impending exam.

This was taken during the lunch break — the “suggested lunchtime stop”, the Dolphin Inn, can be seen in the background, to the left of the phone box.

The phone box is the main focus of this photo. Partly because it seemed a little incongruous in such a pretty village and partly because I realised that old-style red phone boxes are becoming rarer to find. The ones in London are quite often in a parlous state and sometimes are treated as bins and / or toilets.

16/52: 10/04/09 [Tulips], originally uploaded by reynard.

Tulips in Greenwich Park: 1/400, f/1.8, Canon EF II 50mm lens.

14/52: 4/04/09 [Daffodils], originally uploaded by reynard.

Two this week because I couldn’t decide which one I preferred. I mean, neither are particularly good, but they demonstrate the nice depth of field I can get with my new Canon EF II 50mm lens.

15/52: 4/04/09 [The DOF of everyday things], originally uploaded by reynard.

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a new lens for a while — possibly a wide angle zoom, but they are a bit pricey. This lens seemed a good compromise — it was pretty cheap (about £80 from Amazon) and you can open it up to f/1.8 so there’s the potential there for some interesting shots — the operative word being potential I think.

The daffodils I took in Gordon Square the first time I tried out the lens; the second shot is a homage to the cover of Norman’s Design of Everyday Things book.

13/52: 26/03/09 [Farewell old friend], originally uploaded by reynard.

Last week my copy of the first volume of Time Out Country Walks finally bought it. To be honest, it’s never been the same since that time I dropped it in a bog on its first or second outing. It was much loved and much used — hopefully I’ll still be able to take some photocopies from it though.

12/52: 21/03/09 [Spot the greenfinch], originally uploaded by reynard.

Now it’s really starting to feel like spring. I was working at home on Friday and there was a flurry of bird activity in the garden. This greenfinch helped himself at the feeder and then flew up into the tree, blending in quite nicely.

Haven’t had a huge amount of time to read recently, what with all this study, but I’m looking forward to getting round to reading some of the books I’ve bought recently. In the photo (clockwise):

Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places
Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia
Bernard Schlink, Der Vorleser
James Meek, The People’s Act of Love
Bill Scott and Theresa Neil, Designing Web Interfaces

10/52: 7/03/09 [Natural History Museum], originally uploaded by reynard.

Sat 7 March, off to the Wildlife Photography exhibition at the Natural History Museum. The Museum was pretty jammed as always with people queuing up to see the dinosaur exhibition.

I’ve bookmarked some of my favourite shots from the exhibition on my Tumblr site.

9/52: 1/03/09: [Maastricht street scene], originally uploaded by reynard.

Maastricht, Sat 28 February. As usual, not the best photo or going on my Flickr stats, the most popular photo I took this weekend. I don’t know why I chose this one to be honest, it was just a whim. I just pointed my camera and took the photo without checking what I was taking. I thought it would be “interesting”.