Road Trippin', CPOYin' and end of the Season-in'

hey there, here's a couple things to check out:

• The College Photographer of the Year competition judging is being broadcast as a series of PODCASTS. Each installment features the semi-finals or finals of a category. It's pretty interesting to listen as the judges view the images and make comments on the entries. Best of all, there's some really great photos to see.

• The Season, a Photo Blog by the Chicago Tribune's Scott Strazzante has been a great inspiration for me as far as sports photography goes, just wrapped up. Scott is going to follow a single team from each season of high school sports throughout the ups and downs of their season. His fall sports muse was the Joilet Catholic volleyball team. He ran a single image each week in the paper, but updated the blog portion almost daily throughout the season — from their first practice to their loss in the playoffs. This is some really great images and storytelling — plus you get Scott's at times quirky narration too.

• Tomorrow I'm driving up to Bellevue to shoot the Naselle-Seattle Lutheran 2B state playoff football game. And while its really only about three hours, it still counts as a road trip! that of course means, road trip music time!

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
I can't say enough about this record, it's easily the best and most complete album I've heard this year. I picked it up last time I was in Portland at Everyday Music on Burnside. It was pretty sweet, as the vinyl copy I bought was not only a sweet double album gate fold, but also came with a CD copy of the album as well. Even better, the CD features a link to Wilco's Web site, which gives the ability to download some live shows and a B side. Of course, many out there probably don't know who these guys are, but you should, they're one of the best American rock bands out there today. Actually, you probably have already heard many of the songs from this record as they made an unprecidented deal with Volkswagon to use a number of the new tunes in V-Dubs fall advertising campaign. I read an interview with the band that said with the demise of radio or even MTV as a way of getting music out there, advertising is one of the few ways people are finding out about new music. An interesting concept ...
Here's a video of them performing "Side with the Seeds" in their loft in Chicago where they recorded the album: