As I brought the blade to the patient, I tried to infer the right depth, weight, and speed by matching to my pictured recollection of all the other incisions I had seen—an act, perhaps, akin to Ansel Adams's technique of photographic previsualization.
Benjamin A. Freeman reflects on how studying photography can be beneficial to medical education.
The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the November 2025 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.