THEY say a picture paints a thousand words. Well, Kevin, may your brush never run dry. Happy-snapper Kevin Legg celebrated his 53rd birthday today by popping into his second home with a box of chocolates and taking a few photographs before heading off to a cinema and a meal with his better half Lyn.

Kevin started taking pictures, aged 12, using a 35mm Zenith and his skills found a new direction 17 months ago when he applied for a Saturday job working behind the bar at Chandler’s Ford Snooker Club.

One day, club-boss Jim Everett needed a picture of former England international Mike Finn but his camera wasn’t working. Kevin, who is never knowingly seen outside his home without a camera of some sort, said: “I’ve got one in the car.”

When he opened the next Saturday’s Echo, he said: “Bloody hell, that’s my photo.”

From these humble beginnings it was just a short step to photographing three-time women’s world champion Reanne Evans at a tournament in Derbyshire.

Kevin admits he knows very little about snooker - about as much as I know about photography - but when he is set up in the corner of the club with a tripod, he can now read the game well enough to recognise when a particular shot is about to me which will give him the action picture he is chasing.

And, of course, it is usually at this time when a player or spectator walks across his line.

Kevin has now had hundreds of pictures published in the Echo, in CueSport magazine, in the US-based Pool & Billiard Magazine, on numerous websites, in many local papers across the country as a photographer for the WLBSA and even in the Irish Sun.

In fact, the famous picture of Suzie Opacic standing in front of Jim’s ‘no smoking’ sign, which was hurriedly taken as the Hampshire Golden Girl snatched a quick break from cooking burgers, travelled the world in days to accompany the story about her ban from a local social club.

But Kevin’s favourite shot was the moody picture of Arron ‘On-Fire’ McIntyre gazing into the distance on the club’s balcony taken from the car park. And he had the most fun taking the Sunday morning picture of Suzie lying on a snooker table. But it was the double-page spread about ex-Saints star Ken Jones that he is most proud of.

As well as his part-time work at the club, Kevin is a white-van driver for a pet food distributor. But on Sundays, while dispensing drinks, he is on hand with his camera to capture history being made; like the day he witnessed nine-year-old Shane Castle score back-to-back centuries on the line-up.

He is still “amazed” at how it has all taken off, but as Churchill said “This is just the end of the beginning.”