Officer P. Jo, 34, is putting his talents to good use. His picture of San Quentin was selected to be the image for the 2014 San Quentin calendar.
He says, “It feels great that the administration selected my photo, but most of my thanks must go to San Quentin Office Technician Raphaele Casale because she is the one who pushed me.”
Jo, who has been taking pictures for about a decade, has never received any formal training. “Everything I learned about taking pictures, I learned online.”
His pictures are like stories, each image capturing a moment in time but transcending the moment to live on in the viewer’s mind.
There is a hidden power behind each image.
“I see my pictures more as a hobby right now, but for the viewer they may see it as art; it’s all about perspective,” says Jo.
He says the whole picture is a process, “Sometimes I wait four or five hours in one spot for the right moment to take the picture.” Jo says it takes patience when he is waiting for the proper light or composition, but it is time well spent.
He says he has always been fascinated with cameras, and as a child his father took him out into nature, and he fell in love with it.
This fascination and love has transformed into Jo’s art. His favorite subjects are landscapes, but he also enjoys taking pictures of cities.
The time he spends away from his job as a CDCR officer, he says he travels a lot. “I like to go to national parks and foreign countries,” Jo says. Wherever he goes, his camera goes with him.
When he retires, he says that he may take up a career in photography.
He gives his father a lot of credit for inspiring him. “My dad introduced me to nature, and if he never did that, I wouldn’t have known what’s out there in the world,” says Jo. He says without this opportunity to see the world he would have probably just spent all of his time sitting on the couch playing video games.
Jo also recognizes that other photographers have motivated him to take some of his photos to the extreme. He says he takes it to the limit to get the perfect shot sometimes.
Jo is very humble about his photographs saying, “I am just the eye behind the camera.”
