About Me

My name is Bob Somrak and I was born in the small town of Paonia, Colorado.  I have lived all my life in Colorado and have always been an outdoor enthusiast.  I started taking pictures with a little Kodak box camera when I was about 7 or 8.  When I turned 13 my Uncle gave me an Argus C3 Camera (the brick).  I have never stopped taking pictures since.  When I graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1971 I finally bought a REAL SLR, a Minolta SRT-101 with a Minolta 50mm f1.4 lens. After that I started to slowly add lenses, flashes, etc.  My first added lens was a cheap Vivitar 80-200 zoom.  It was not a very good lens and I quickly replaced it with a Vivitar Series 1 70-210 f3.5 zoom lens.  This lens was very sharp for its day and had an excellent Macro feature.  This lens was followed by a Vivitar Series 1 35-85 f2.8 vari-focal lens.  It was not a true zoom but was a very nice lens.  I then purchased a Vivitar Series 1 600 f8 Solid CAT lens.  It was a VERY sharp lens if you could get it focused and hold it still with Kodachrome 64.  At this point I also bought a Minolta 28 wide angle.  I then purchased a Minolta XD-11.  Great camera.  I usually loaded one camera with Kodachrome 64 and the other with Kodachrome 200.  The 200 speed really helped when using the 600mm lens.  During this time I got my 2 nephews interested in photography.  They would come and borrow ALL my equipment for trips to Yellowstone and elsewhere.  In 1998 I gave ALL my camera gear, and I mean ALL, to my nephews and started over with Canon EOS stuff.  In 2000 I retired from the Colorado Department of Transportation.  In 2008 I finally switched to DIGITAL by buying a Canon EOS 5D.  My main passion is being in the great outdoors and nature photography really adds to the experience.  I hope you enjoy the photos.