Southwestern Michigan College Art Gallery will feature Twin Cities Camera Club photography until Feb. 2, as its first spring semester exhibit.

Gallery hours will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The gallery is open to visitors at no cost.

The club, organized in 1933, meets the second and fourth Mondays each month, September through June, at its building at 521 Elm St. in downtown St. Joseph.

SMC digital photography professor Dennis Hafer and graphic design professor Bill Rothwell are among its members who compete in monthly contests.

The art gallery in room 108 of the Dale A. Lyons Building on SMC’s Dowagiac campus dedicates the front gallery to new prints by current members while the rear gallery features a looped video projection showcasing a range of works from previous years.

Technology revolutionized photography during the club’s 83-year existence, with darkroom chemicals supplanted by manipulable digital images.

“Seagull Wave” by Pam Rothwell, Bill’s wife who has worked in hospital offices, is a striking example of contemporary creativity with its seagull soaring through a watery vortex.

“We are not meat suits walking around,” Rothwell said. “We are energy fields. My goal is to use technology to get that point across. A lot of people think of seagulls as scavengers that make a lot of noise. I do not think of them that way at all.”

“As far as technology,” she added, “some people look at photography as not being an art form. I do not agree. They also feel that to manipulate a photo is not being true to the form. I do not agree with that, either.”

Ralph Harju, a commodities trader by vocation, overlaid statues in Florence, Italy, with graffiti for “Then and Now” and merged three shots into one whirling image of Dance Chicago ballet in Millennium Park.

“Graffiti in Italy does not destroy walls. A lot of it is artistic and beautiful,” Elaine Harju said. “And it is everywhere. We both took pictures of graffiti because it’s so interesting. I should have put in the one of a red bicycle against a rosy wall with graffiti of all these eyeglasses. People think I added it, but when I photograph, what’s there is what I take. I don’t manipulate it on the computer except to sharpen it a bit. That’s the challenge for me. If I want to make something up, I do it on a canvas” painting in her gallery at the Box Factory for the Arts next to SMC art professor emeritus David Baker.

But she also enjoys photography with Ralph. Her “Vortex of Light” documents origami, or folded paper, covering an entire wall in a Japanese pavilion in Italy.

“We were in a small town during a festival with wine, cheese and flowers. We were both taking pictures. When we get back, he has a man leaning on a humongous warhead. I didn’t even see it. Playing off each other like that is fun,” Elaine said.

Hafer’s “Reaching for the Sky” at first glance looks like skyscrapers.

“That was in Columbus, Ind.,” Hafer said of the 1997 Bartholomew County Veterans Memorial — 25 40-foot limestone pillars on the courthouse lawn engraved with the names of 172 war dead.

“I laid on the ground with a wide-angle lens and shot up,” Hafer said. “Most people do think they are skyscrapers.”

Barbara Kirby submitted Frozen Lighthouse and Cubs World Series Skyline, a panorama of celebratory city lights dancing across Lake Michigan she captured from Adler Planetarium and stitched together from eight images.

“Ready (Or Not),” showcasing Art Appreciation students, is in the gallery Feb. 6 through March 2, with a free reception at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16.

Southwestern Michigan College is a public, residential and commuter, community college, founded in 1964. The college averages in the top 10 percent nationally for student academic success based upon the National Community College Benchmark Project. Southwestern Michigan College strives to be the college of first choice, to provide the programs and services to meet the needs of students, and to serve our community. The college is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and is a member of the American Association of Community Colleges.