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When a picture of a lacrosse player came to life in the dark room in 1970, Dennis Stierer, a sophomore engineering student at Purdue University became a photographer.

Stierer’s photos have touched the lives of thousands over the last 38 years and 100 of his favorites are on display at the Keenan Center Gallery until March 9.

On Sunday, friends of the Union-Sun photographer attended the opening of the show that is sponsored by Time Warner Cable. The gallery hours are from noon to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

“I went out to take a photo one weekend and just got hooked on it,” said Stierer, the engineering major. “I could see the picture develop on the paper. It was like a revelation went off in me which is so exciting. I just had to keep doing it.”

Stierer, who had been a reporter for the college newspaper, had his lacrosse player published in The Exponent. After graduating with a degree in clinical psychology, he went to work for a photographer in Fort Wayne, Ind. That’s where met his bride to be, Mary Ellen Paulson of Lockport. Mary Ellen was a marketing representative for Eastman Kodak.

The Stierers moved to Boston where Dennis operated his own gallery for about 12 years. He took commercial pictures for advertising agencies and also did work for National Geographic. Some of that magazine work, including Pilot Wales at the New England Aquarium and Having Fun on the Beach in Guadeloupe, is on display at the South Guest Room.

Mary Ellen and Dennis Stierer, now with two daughters, found the housing in Boston too expensive and bought a house in Lockport in 1990. Dennis began working at the Union-Sun in 1991.

Does he consider himself as a photo journalist or a fine art photographer?

“I’m a photographer,” he said. “There’s no pretext to it. Sometimes I take pictures for the newspaper and sometimes I take pictures for me, both of which I hope a lot of people enjoy.”

That’s what’s happening at the Kenan Gallery.

“We really enjoyed the manipulated Polaroid’s. They’re something different we’ve never seen,” said Bob Blackman, a Cambria farmer who attended the opening with his wife Margaret. “He picks up a perception of scenery that maybe a normal person walks by and doesn’t appreciate. All of sudden, when he captures it, you say ‘wow.’ I looked at that also and didn’t see that, but he did.”

Rob Dickinson of Lockport said, “It’s fantastic. It shows all the detail.”

“I think it’s just spectacular,” Janet Paonessa of Grand Island said. “I just like the resolution in everything. It’s very clear and exacting.”

What’s not so clear are the Manipulated Polaroid’s. That’s a lost art because Polaroid does not make the SX70 film anymore.

“It takes about two or three hours to dry,” Dennis explained. “During the drying process you take tools and move emulation around to get that painterly effect.”

The 16 X 16 color print of St. Mary’s Steeple was the first to be sold. It has an impressionistic “painterly effect” and cost $198. The prices range from $135 to $249.

Stierer is self-taught.

“Different people have shown me different things along the way,” he said. “I took courses on my own, but nothing formally.”

Stierer likes to work in a dark room and Burt Marshall, the Director of Social Services appreciates that. “I like his work. The clarity,” Marshall said. “My grandfather was a photographer and did his own developing. It brings back some memories.”

Marshall particularly liked the black and white, closing feeling of the photos at the gorge walls at Letchworth State Park. Those are traditional silver gelatin prints.

“The one with the mist in the morning, you don’t need the color for that,” Marshall said.

With digital technology, photography has changed but Stierer uses old cameras for his fine art work.

“I like working with that type of camera and real film, working in the dark room, hand-coating my papers to make prints.,” he said. “I like the hands-on approach to doing photography. It’s not that you have more control, it’s a different type of process. It slows you down to do something. You need time to do this and the time gives you more time to think about what you are really doing.”

With newspapers, there is a deadline — often, no time.

“You always have a little artistic flavor in every photograph, whether you’re a fine art photographer or a photojournalist,” he said. “We all put a little bit of art into it when we take a picture.”

The Kenan project took two years. Stierer estimates he has a collection of 80,000 to120,000 negatives.

Contact reporter Bill Wolcott at 439-9222, ext. 6246.