http://www.calvintang.com/blog Photography, SCUBA Diving and Travel. Wed, 28 Apr 2010 21:40:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2010/01/3dhd-tv-coming-to-a-living-room-near-you The Alki Junkyard is a lesser known dive site, just around the corner from several very popular Seacrest dive sites, that offers some hidden jewels in the rough. From "Shaggy Mouse" Nudibranchs and Giant Sea Spiders to Juvenile Wolf Eels - it's a great spot to shoot photos and to enjoy making a dive plan for a moderately current intensive dive site (read: OW classes aren't held here). The eel grass looks like wheat, blowing in the wind - to be enjoyed during your safety stop, and there's the occasional score that a bottle hunter can enjoy finding at this dive site. ]]> http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2009/09/bottle-hunting-alki-junkyard http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2009/08/beneath-emerald-waters I just got my Kindle 2 last night and here are my first impressions. Downloads are extremely fast. I bought a Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers, from the Amazon web site. Within about a minute I looked down and my Kindle was telling me it was downloaded and ready to read. I also subscribed to a few magazine free trials, like Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Motley Fool, Asimov's Science Fiction, and US News & World Report. All of them updated really quickly.]]> http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2009/02/kindle-2-arrives http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2009/02/divers-threaten-to-boycott-sabah-over-shark-finning http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2009/01/kauai-diving-the-andaman-shootout This past weekend a group of Northwest Dive Club buddies and I headed out to the Olympic Peninsula to dive in Lake Crescent. This alpine lake is nestled in the Olympic National Park, a temperate rainforest and one of Washington State's great natural treasures. Among the group of technical divers in attendance, we had four gentlemen who played various roles in the solving of a 72 year-old mystery, involving the disappearance of a young couple back in the late 1920s. A team of divers was able to discover the location of the submerged car that carried this young couple to their tragic deaths, so many decades ago.]]> http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2008/10/diving-the-warren-car-lake-crescent Today I did my first solo CCR dive, and brought along the new Nikon D300/Subal ND30 rig. It was also my first time using the 105mm macro lens (and accompanying port). I didn't get fantastic shots, but it was one of the most challenging, complex dives I've ever done, simply because there was so much to think about (both camera and CCR) and no buddy to depend on or ask for help.]]> http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2008/09/solo-rebreather-dive-macro-photography One of my favorite dive sites in the Pacific Northwest is about to be destroyed, so I went diving there recently with a couple good buddies and shot the last photos I'll ever take at this gem of a dive site. A long story short, Governor Christine Gregoire's Puget Sound Initiative aims to remove pilings in our waters containing the chemical "creosote". But, there are several red flags pertaining to the selection of this site, among hundreds to choose from, since this particular set of creosote pilings happens to be home to an abundant amount of local marine life.]]> http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2008/09/tribute-to-edmonds-oil-dock Well, this afternoon my good dive buddy Nailer and I (and our new buddy Larry) threw up our caps (hoods?) as we graduated from Advanced Closed Circuit Rebreather (CCR) Trimix class (I believe this is called Mod 3 in Europe). This means that I can use hypoxic amounts of oxygen (less than 16%) mixed with helium and nitrogen, in various amounts, as diluent when mixing with pure oxygen in a closed breathing loop. I am now certified to dive to 330 feet, which opens up a lot of diving options. It seems like forever ago, but just 7 months prior I started my first CCR class, Air Diluent CCR cert. It did take me months to find the groove on the Meg, but sometime along the way it just clicked. I'm glad I stuck with it because honestly, those first dozen dives or so had me thinking, what have I done?. Now I feel pretty natural in the water again, not as carefree as on OC before I made the switch, but definitely confident, which is huge.]]> http://www.calvintang.com/blog/2008/06/advanced-trimix-for-closed-circuit-rebreathers