I sometimes see photography as solving a riddle.

You’re faced with near-infinite possibilities every time you look around with a camera in your hand; what lens, what shutter speed, what perspective, what to include and exclude, whether to wait for the light to change—but if you’re like me and have (almost) always used cameras with a sensor based on 35mm film, the one constant has been the shape and proportion of the frame. That’s what the X-Pan gave me all those years ago: a new riddle to solve.

So in the absence of a camera that forced the new perspective on me, I improvised—and it turns out the old riddle was there all along, I just needed to find it; and all it took was a trip around the world to prompt me to go looking for it again…