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John Arthur Nichol

  • Court

    The dog park at Long Reef includes a tennis court, for dogs who are serious about ballplay.

    A big area of rain-wet grass begins in the foreground and extends to a line of wind-blown bushes in the distance. Three trees and a stump stand in the middle distance. In the left foreground is the corner of a children’s fenced-off play area, and just past that is a blue tennis court with a big, spreading tree overlooking it. The tennis court is wet and shiny from the rain. The sky is pale blue, with dark and light clouds.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 24

  • A Delightful Message to Passers-By

    The closed double doors of a restaurant, framed in red and trimmed with roughly painted gold. In the right-hand window hangs a sign saying ‘Closed’. Beneath the sign are the opening hours, and a sheet of white paper with a message written very clearly in beautiful, caligraphic script. The message says: Dear customers, we are closed for the time bing. Some damages are occurred inside the restaurant that needed repairment. We will resume our business as soon as possible. Thank you - Tibetan Peace Restaurant.

  • Little Putin, the saddest of boys,
    Fills the Kremlin with sorrow and noise:
    ‘My big brother Xi
    Doesn’t listen to me,
    And he won’t let me play with his toys.’

  • At Long Reef, two big, serious dogs cross the road to the park and wait to be released. As the woman bends to their collars, another dog appears that is small, hysterical and yellow. It leaps like a jumping bean, up and down, back feet leaving the ground and body vertical in the air. The woman fights her way to the lead and removes it, standing back, but the little dog just closes the distance and bounces, bounces, every way she turns.

  • A small girl in pigtails twists around in a trailing hand. Destinations don’t interest her. She wants to see what they’re leaving behind.

  • A big black dog, densely furred and fluffy, tours Newtown with a retinue of two small girls, a grandmother and a man with curly dark hair. They pause in the shade, and the dog lies panting.

  • A Chinese girl in a white mask, feet together on the footpath, stands looking down at the phone in her hands. She’s dressed in a football jersey that’s way too big, and light grey tracksuit pants so baggy they’re almost comical. There is, however, some tension in the set of her brow, and it appears she’s being serious.

  • A tall young woman, one brow raised and a twist to her mouth, gazes down the length of her arm at a phone. She’s dressed in grey scrubs and standing with a hip cocked, redefining cool.

  • Walking along the footpath in Millar Street, Drummoyne, I happen upon a massacre of grapes.

  • I’m a coward, says Vladimir Puting:
    You’ll never get me near the shooting.
    Put some stooges in place
    For my stand-in to face,
    Then I’ll let you get back to the looting.

  • Chance

    Chance encounter with the past, as bottles rise from 60 years beneath a carpark

    Three old-looking, dirt-caked, clear glass bottles lie on a patch of brown soil littered with broken bricks, loose stones and terra cotta pipe. The left-most bottle, beside a stretch of rusty mesh, has the classic shape of a Coca Cola bottle, and part of the brand name is visible, cast in the glass. The middle bottle is tall, with a heavy green base and a broken neck, and the last bottle is a small rectangle with rounded shoulders. Between this and the tall bottle lies the broken neck of a brown beer bottle, filled with dirt. All around, bits and pieces of glass and bottles lie scattered on the surface or half buried in the dirt.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 23

  • At Dee Why the line for the B1 stretches almost back to Howard Avenue, and half way along it, before the bus has even reached her, a woman waves gleefully at someone on board.

  • Three high school girls huddle in a bus shelter. Two squeeze together on the seat and one crouches in front like a windbreak, gazing at the sky.

  • Girl on bus, in outbursts punctuated by mumbled replies, giggles or silence:

    ‘Why do you want to use my camera?’

    ‘No-wa!’

    ‘Oh! You dog! No-o! Eww! Delete that!’

    ‘No way! Oh my god you idiot!’

    ‘That is so RAW!’

  • A smiling old woman walks by in a big, deep, wonderfully wide and floppy hat. She’s always in the shade.

  • A girl dressed for summer buys a huge fur hat at the markets, and wears it as she browses in the heat.

  • An elderly man lowers his pot plant to the ground and lifts a foot, misses, tries again and tightens his shoelace on the chair. He goes inside to order and his wife, tethered to a seat, gazes after him with all the anxiety that dogs display when shops have swallowed their humans.

  • Insect

    Insect Focus Out of Focus

    Two small, elongated flies, with black bodies and shiny, translucent wings, with their heads down as they feed on a light, reflective surface.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 22

  • Buoys support a dangling net round part of a jetty at the Spit. A hobby farm for oysters, or is it just a private refuge from the sharks?

  • A girl of 8 or 9, floppy school hat and uniform tunic, idles in the arcade as her mother browses fruit and vegetables. The girl moves her hands, and sways a couple of steps as if she needs to dance. Finding herself in a clear space, she lifts her arms and turns an easy cartwheel, spinning out of sight beyond the door.

  • A very old man sits crumbling at a cafe table with his far less crumbly wife. He wears a red cap, and a t-shirt saying: ‘Something, somewhere, went terribly wrong.’

  • A man and a woman are standing in the road, risking everything to point at the club’s facade. The man wears club regalia and the woman is dressed as businesswoman-on-holiday. She has long blonde hair, sunglasses and a confident smile.

    They climb to the footpath and point more pointedly, then return to the road to refine the big pig picture.

    Back on the footpath, they advance from the club’s domain to the edge of the white louvre shutters of the establishment-next-door, where the man’s robust voice drops to an extended whisper. The woman nods her head, and the man nods back.

    They retreat from the shutters and vanish into the club.

  • A woman at Collaroy, trying to walk while surrounded by jumping children: ‘Stop talking and yelling at me! Stop yelling at me!’

  • Tiny

    Behold: the Tiny Head and Beady Little Eyes of Thoth

    A white ibis bird stands on grass with its head turned to face the camera. Its body is similar in size and shape to a chicken’s, but its legs are longer and its head is smaller. Its beak is as long as its legs but very thin, curving downwards and tapering to a point. Its head, beak, legs and tail are black, the head looking smooth and bald. The bird’s bright, dark eyes are on either side of its head.

    March Photoblog Challenge Day 21

  • Three Noisy Miners are on the ground beneath my window, pecking at buns the demolishers have left behind. They are two parents, I think, and a nagging adolescent. One of the parents flies up in a huff. It’s just on the other side of the glass and seems to rise in slow motion, as if its beating wings can find no traction in the air.