Actually, no points for Dave. I am too stupid for words, and dudduddud, I am very sorry to have dragged you into this as well.
I was toying with the image some more, and I tried flipping it one way and another... then something caught my eye: I had flipped it upside down and backwards, and even though I was looking at the picutre from the other side (that is, as if I'd turned my monitor upside down), the wider part of the runway still appeared at the top of the photo! In other words, whether I had the image facing as it originally was, or whether it was upside down, the wider part of the runway still appeared to be at the top of the frame, regardless of whether the top of the frame was in front of or behind the aircraft. OK. That's clear as mud. Here's the illustration. The two red lines are exactly the same length:
So, remember how I went on about how things that were closer to the camera appeared larger. Well, yeah. Just like in this picture. Please. Somebody print the picture and measure it. Check my work. The way I see it, the runway appears wider at the top of the frame, but when I measure it, it is wider at the bottom of the frame.
Somebody else can figure this out. I'm going to bed.
Dave
PS For further research...
The aircraft in the image appears to be departing 25R at LAX. The taxiways in the frame are Papa and November. That's a 9,000 feet remaning marker in the foreground to the left side of the image--from where we're sitting that's 9,000 feet behind the aircraft, with roughly 3,000 in front of it (at Papa). The dots on the diagrams place the airframe on the airport, moving right to left (east to west).
There\'s more than one illusion at work here.