WEATHER MAKES FOR GREAT CHANCE AT SNAPSHOTS, PHOTOGRAPHERS SAY

Nature dominated semifinalist selections during the final week of the KINSA contest.

KINSA, Kodak International Newspaper Snapshot Awards, is the world's largest annual amateur-snapshot contest.

Semifinalists selected this week photographed a rainbow, a storm cloud, a flamingo and a preschooler on a sheep.

Winning photographers are Ann Presnell of Jackson, Brett Blackman of Jackson, Maggie Friend of Cape Girardeau, and Ginger Gray of Advance.

For six weeks, local photographers have submitted their pictures to a panel of local judges.

In all, 24 semifinalists were selected. From those, eight finalists will be forwarded to the international competition.

During the week prior to Labor Day, all the photographs entered in the local contest will be displayed at West Park Mall, and a People's Choice Award will be given.

Newspapers from around the world are invited to sponsor local contests. The Southeast Missourian was the only newspaper in Missouri to hold a contest this year.

Ann Presnell said her photograph of a rainbow turned out much better than she expected.

"We were on vacation this summer," she said. "The picture was taken in Montana at my grandparents' old farm house,"

As she viewed the old building, a thunderstorm came up. "It even sprinkled on us a little," she said.

Then the rainbow shone through.

"The sun in the west was so intense and the black clouds so striking," she said. "I just took the picture as a memory of the farm house and look what I got. I had no idea the rainbow was ending right at the farm house."

Brett Blackman of Jackson is a manager at the Jackson Municipal Swimming Pool. Among his duties is photographing different events during the summer for a pool scrapbook.

"On that day, we were on the deck and saw this big cloud in the east," Blackman said. "We were watching for lightning and thought we would just try to take a picture. I didn't know how it would turn out. I was thinking it would be a big dark picture. I was surprised when I saw what I got."

Maggie Friend of Cape Girardeau keeps her camera on hand all the time, especially while on vacation. During a trip to Discovery Island in Orlando, Fla., Friend decided to capture a close-up of a pink flamingo.

With a 300 millimeter lens on her camera, she scrambled down the bank to a pond to snap a shot. She didn't have much time before a goose chased her back up the bank.

"It was a little back lit, so I didn't know how it would turn out," she said, "but I ended up with a lot of detail in the bird. Isn't that flamingo beautiful?"

Ginger Gray called herself a "hit-and-miss photographer."

"I take a lot of photographs, but they don't always turn out very well," she said.

Gray likes to photograph her 5-year-old son, Grant, who participates in mutton busting, a rodeo-type event for children ages 3 to 6.

"I was trying to catch him coming out of the shoot," Gray said. "I must have caught that picture at just the right moment."

The picture was taken at the Rock Hill Rodeo on Swinton.