"three-eight-hotel" wrote in message
ups.com...
[...]
Take a look at the second picture, which prompted one of my questions.
I got completely lucky on the timing of the picture, but I was amazed
at how close the planes appear to be [...]

The airplanes are very close.

That said, some optical illusions help with the drama. At a distance,
everything essentially looks 2D. A camera's zoom lens emphasizes this.
Your eye, or the camera's, is not able to differentiate between two objects
18 inches apart versus 18 feet apart versus (at far enough away, say a half
mile or so) 180 feet, as long as those distances are along your line of
sight (obviously you can do better with lateral distances). There's just no
depth perception, and not enough perspective to tell the difference.

This is especially a significant effect for the head-on fly-bys. In
formation, the airplanes really are that close, but when flying head-on they
don't need to be all that close for the viewer to still perceive them as
being very close.

Pete