I’m completely behind on editing and writing up a lot of cool photos that I really want to do justice to. So while I’m getting through my backlog, I figured I’d deviate from the formula a bit (read: procrastinate a bit longer) and instead compile a few of the things I deemed worth reading this week in the worlds of scuba and photography.

Should You Buy a Pony Bottle?

Maybe you’ve come to realize that your single scuba tank leaves you vulnerable to failures, particularly at the deeper recreational depths. Bravo, and congratulations for taking the first step towards becoming a thinking diver! Understanding that diving is inherently risky and applying risk management to dive planning are the primary attributes of the thinking diver.

“Planning is a wonderful habit to cultivate for everyone diving beyond or within sport diving limits, but it is especially critical for anyone doing technical or advanced dives, because without a good solid dive plan, there cannot be a good, solid dive.”

“The root of the problem could be a carryover from sport-diver practices. These  essentially boil down to: start with a fully charged dive cylinder, monitor your SPG, and surface – or arrive at the safety stop – with something between seeds and stems and a sixth of your starting pressure – the ubiquitous 500 psi for those familiar with dive briefings on Caribbean dive ops. If followed, all other things begin equal and the SPG having been serviced, recently calibrated and working correctly, this technique will likely get a diver home. But if anything goes pear-shaped during the dive, it provides an inadequate gas reserve and an unsuitable margin for error.”

-Steve Lewis, “Gas Planning 101: SAC/RMV and ways to make sure you have enough gas to complete your dive“

So you’ve decided you want a redundant gas supply… but how big a tank do you need? Many “emergency air” type bottles are woefully inadequate and lead the nonthinking diver to a potentially fatal false sense of security. In “USING ADDITIONAL REDUNDANCY: the maligned and misunderstood pony bottle,” technical diving authority Steve Lewis (author of The Six Skills and Other Discussions: Creative Solutions for Technical Divers, a wonderful resource any diver, technical or not, can benefit from) touches upon the important considerations when choosing a redundant pony bottle.

Nine Reasons Why Your Regulators Leak (And How to Fix Them)

In a perfect world, dive equipment would always be perfectly maintained, air-tight, and bubble-free. In the real world, divers frequently see bubbles coming from their scuba tanks, regulators, and hoses, and often don’t know why these leaks are happening or how to fix them. Many of these repairs are actually pretty basic for you to do yourself. In 9 Reasons Why Regulators Leak (And How to Fix ‘Em), Scuba Diving Magazine breaks down the most common regulator failure points and teaches you how to fix leaks (as well as ranking the relative level of seriousness for each failure). It’s a simple and informative read that might just save a dive for you someday.

The Lightroom 5 Book for 60% Off

Each week, the Adobe Press releases a deal on one of their eBooks. This week’s is a resource on Lightroom: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book by Martin Evening. I absolutely love Lightroom and use it for everything–photo cataloguing, editing, printing. I even made this site in Lightroom. If you don’t have Lightroom, you probably need it. If you have Lightroom and don’t have an intimate knowledge of its workings, here’s a cheap book.

Shark Socks

I love sharks and I love socks. So OF COURSE I love these Shark Attack Socks!