News Photography
Chris Cummins / Greenville Daily Reflector

Get good caption information. That's a standing order for Cox news photographers. Chris Cummins had every intention of doing so after snapping his award-winning shot of citizens kissing amid floodwaters.

He scribbled their names on a piece of paper, and secured it in his watertight film canister. After making this photo, he waded into deep water to snap others.

"The canister didn't turn out to be watertight," Cummins said. "When I pulled it out, the water had gotten in there and blurred the names.

"I've never heard from those people again."

He and Daily Reflector photo chief Greg Eans faced many hardships while photographing the aftermath of a flood that inundated Greenville.

"Our electricity went down, and our water went out, and we were without our film processing machine," Cummins said.

"We had to hand-process our rolls of film, something a lot of us were first weaned on in our photography courses in college."

Cummins has been a staff photographer for the Daily Reflector since February 1998. The Kansas City, Kan., native graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and completed internships at daily newspapers in Burlington, Iowa, and Bloomington, Ind.

How did he find Greenville and the Daily Reflector?

"Through the National Press Photographers Association," he said. "They have an information bank, with job postings nationwide. I was just hungry for a job, entering my last month of my second internship."