AUDIE PHILIP, aka the Dim Locator, cuts an enigmatic figure at many venues, hiding in the shadows armed with his Pentax K-M camera.

Despite his unassuming nature and his observational style – he captures scenes from afar rather than getting up close and personal – he is often a subject of much intrigue about town.

This is because there seems to be no event which the Southend man doesn’t appear at, whether it be a band night, Sunday afternoon jazz at the Railway Hotel, or a northern soul all-nighter.

But despite taking thousands of photos since 1982, many which have become part of the body of work of numerous bands and promoters, Audie doesn’t consider himself a photographer, just a man who has “got a camera”.

The guy is humble, shy, yet quietly confident, humourous and intelligent.

“I don’t do anything with them”, he said, when asked what he does with all the pictures.

“I send some to bands, promoters, people who ask... helps fill up space on websites. Some of my friends have them if they are of things they have been to, but I don’t do anything with them.”

In fact, it took a fair bit of persuasion for him to agree to share them with the Echo and tell us about the pictures. But to the 50-year-old, it really is nothing more than a hobby.

“I would be going to the events anyway, so I might as well take some pictures while I’m there,”he says.

“I just like pictures. I’ve always liked colour pictures. They weren’t very well regarded until fairly recently. In the newspaper business black and white was taken seriously for a long time.

“I remember intelligent people saying if you ran a colour picture with a serious story the colour would detract from the story –I didn’t get that at all.

“I was never interested in dark rooms and printing. If I was going to do it I wanted colour prints, which was seen as rather philistine, but it was the right time for it, more or less.”

Audie doesn’t even have a portfolio because: “I’m not touting for anything.”