Exhibit features panoramic photos of Las Vegas

It gets most people in trouble, but circular thinking has helped Thomas Schiff make a name for himself. The 61-year-old, who sells insurance for a living, takes panoramic photos in his spare time, photos that have been shown all over his native Cincinnati.

An exhibition of 20 -- spotlighting the Strip and downtown -- graces the Las Vegas Art Museum until Nov. 30.

"Las Vegas is a fabulous place for panoramic photography," says Schiff, who snapped the photos during vacations between 1999 and 2006. "Las Vegas cries out to be photographed. Everything's over the top -- the architecture, the design, the lights, the budget."

The panoramas -- which also comprise his fourth book, "Vegas 360?" -- spotlight locales including the Las Vegas Hilton, Caesars Palace, Bellagio and Bally's.

"You have to look for a place that not only has something appealing in front of your eyes, but where everything around you complements what's there," Schiff says.

His favorite was Fremont Street.

"The big light dome provided a lot of visual information in a very compact area," he says. "The lights down there are very bright." (Natural lighting is important because panoramic photos are ruined by flashes, which illuminate only specific segments.)

Schiff began his hobby in fourth grade with a Kodak Brownie. But it really took off in 1994, when he broadened his visual field.

"One day, I was photographing storefront windows, and I noticed the reflection in the glass of the scene directly behind me," he says. "Then something clicked in my mind, and I realized that, with a panoramic camera, you can do the same thing.

"Since then, I've worked exclusively in the format."

For Schiff, the process involves carefully setting up a Hulcherama 360 panoramic camera that exposes film in a continuous, nine-inch strip as its body rotates mechanically.

"I have to adjust the tripod with a carpenter's level to get the camera perfectly even," Schiff says.

He then telescopes the tripod upward 20-30 feet.

"With a conventional camera, if you want to want to take a picture of the sky, you can just tilt the camera back," he says. "But you can't do that with a panoramic camera, because you get the sky in half the photo and the ground in the other."

Oddly, Schiff suspects that his success at his hobby owes to proficiency at his day job. He says that assessing risk for a living imparted the wide-angle thinking necessary to excel in his hobby.

"In the insurance business, risk can come at you from all sides," Schiff says. "So you learn to always be on the lookout for things that can go wrong. And that translates over to panoramic photography, where you look in all directions at once."

Schiff's photos are for sale at the exhibit for $1,400-$4,000. His new book is $40. All proceeds benefit the museum.

Contact reporter Corey Levitan at clevitan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0456.