WHEN I WAS 15 :: seungjin ✔︎

21

When I was twenty-one, he dropped out of university to pursue a passion in photography.

It wasn't unexpected. Despite his academic excellence and capacity for learning and growth in nearly every subject, Seungmin, like me, was drawn to liberal arts. While our mediums were different—my vessel being my own body, and his a camera—we shared a love for the realm of things open to interpretation.

It wasn't exactly 'dropping out,' per se. It was more along the lines of months of discussions with teachers, me, Seungmin's mom, and nights spent scribbling into a diary until the early am's. Seungmin had planned this carefully, the way he planned everything, and set himself up for success in the way that only he could.

While I continued to learn various dance styles, channeling my whole existence into the feeling of my feet, my hands, my back and stomach, all of me against floor and wall and air in the magical whirl that was movement, Seungmin was going viral on social media, his captivating shots touching the hearts of several hundreds of thousands of followers.

"A little to the left," he murmured, pointing to my right. I was used to the mixed directions by now. For a while, Seungmin had been working on his latest series. Dubbed Liquid, the twenty-or-so photographs were meant to convey the fluid movements of my dance.

Ironically, it meant that I would have to retain a position, frozen in place, as Seungmin adjusted his camera settings. The dork was always badmouthing those who stooped as to allow their camera to adjust its own settings automatically. "Lazy," he called them. "They could just use a phone camera at that point. What's the pointing of pouring so much money into a beautiful instrument for capturing the wondrous moments of life if you're not going to play the instrument, letting it do it all for you? It's like buying a fancy grand piano, never to touch it, only to rest a speaker on the lid of and play music electronically."

Ever the poet. I often teased him that he could write a book on The Many Woes of Automatic Camera Users, and the response was always "Watch me."

At the moment, though, I was frozen in quite the uncomfortable pose. Balanced on the toes of my right foot, I'd kicked my left leg up to be held in place with one hand near my ears, my free arm curled in the air. My muscles were burning, and Seungmin only clicked shot after shot, his mouth twisted into an unsatisfied frown.

I collapsed a few minutes later, falling onto the floor with none of the grace my teachers loved to praise. "Maybe," I huffed, "you should do some shutter speed magic, and take the photos while I'm moving. That way, it's not only fluid, but also genuine."

It was the first of the series. Until now, Liquid had lived only as sketches, plans of shots Seungmin would one day take.

He glanced at me curiously. "I was going to do that," he said. "I was just getting the settings right. I don't know why you felt the need to pose."

"You—"

I stared at him.

After a moment, with a hint of a whiny tone in my voice, I asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Simple," Seungmin said, snapping a photo of me on the ground, an exasperated look on my face. "You have really nice legs, and I wasn't about to give up my spectacular view of them."