Julian Oliver Bell,  Photography, Stuff and Nonsense.

Welcome to my digital world. I am Julian and have been living and working in Amsterdam, the Netherlands for the last 20 years or so. I am happy here, I value the respect of individual freedom and human rights. I work as a printer to pay the rent, my hobbies and interests are many and now I'm making my own home pages. Photography, Stuff and Nonsense.
Which is what, where? It's up to you!
Here is a list of the pages. Everything here will be and is still under construction and most of the images are click able.
Have fun......

Update July 2 2000,
nothing much to report for now, since completing the home made camera, the trauma of leaving the lens cap on, my hernia operation, my now not so new job and a small family crisis, I have been devoid of inspiration. Ok, maybe not quite dead, I've been messing around with little meaningless things but my darkroom has been getting further away due to looming redecoration of my flat.
I finally found a poem which I have been looking for in the attic for a couple years now, it was given to me by a good friend of mine who died last year. I have posted the poem in the Stuff & Nonsense section for my dutch visitors (it's in dutch).
Several people have emailed me asking about building plans for my home made camera. I never really made any, I started with the film holder and built it more or less out of my head. As said before, the big secret is that a camera is just a light tight box and the measurements just depend on the film holder and the lens.
It's a fine day and life goes on, until the next update.........
 

home made, scale focussing, point and shoot large format camera, the finished article

Cameras

Gallery

Stuff and Nonsense

Excuses aan mijn nederlands bezoekers.Terwijl ik wel nederlands spreek ben ik niet in staat deze paginas in het nederlands te schrijven. Ik vind het al moeilijk genoeg met mijn eigen taal. Zie : "Nederlands is een moeilijk taal".

Update: 14 April 2000.
After spending the first two weeks of the millennium sick with a dreadful flu, I then took the risk of changing a very good job for a very good job. The gamble paid off and I started my new job a month ago, only after two weeks to have a groin operation which has left me hopping around in circles at home again for two weeks. I have done very little to these home pages and it still hurts to sit for long periods but I have still been messing around with my hobbies without much serious result. I've had a couple of adventures with the home made camera, would you believe, I spent a whole day wandering around Amsterdam with the thing leaving the rear lens cap on. I could have shot myself if not obviously being incapable of hitting even my own foot. I haven't managed to photograph the darkroom yet but I did manage to get a bit further with the filming mentioned in the rambling story (which I've looked back on many times with the idea of a re-edit but I must admit, I am at a loss what to do. At least the spelling should be correct.) on the Chinon page.

January 10  2000, commentary added to Gallery section.
I wish everybody a Happy New Year and I am personally pleased that I/we have made it to the 21st century. Personally, I couldn't wait. As the actress said to the bishop (or was it me?), "Let's get it right this time!". Now the camera is finished, I want to add a Darkroom section with more ideas for do-it-yourself and I hope to be able to spend more time with the whole web site. Over time, it has cost me a small fortune to discover the fact that large format photography can be quite cheap if one remembers that a camera is just a light tight box. If you have a lens and a film holder (even these are not absolutely necessary for a basic image), one is already well on the way to making fine photographs. I hope you find some of the ideas  here useful or interesting.