Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Notice in this picture that this guy's left hand on our right appears much larger than his right hand on our left, and it's because it is closer to the camera. And it isn't just his hand; it's his whole arm. It's smaller on our left than on our right. And it's these differences that give us our perspective about the picture. 

Well, it should work the same way here, but it's very strange. The window frame is the same distance away as the side of the car, yet for some reason, it seems much closer to us.  

Look at the purple thing on the right, and then look at the in-side of the car which is Navy blue. Doesn't it seem like the purple thing is closer to us and less deep? Why is that? Isn't it too large?

Here is an image of the whole window.

You notice in this case that the apparent size of the window frame is large on the right and smaller on the left. Why? Same reason as before: distance. From the photographer's perspective, it's like the hypotenuse of the triangle to get to the left corner and the base of the triangle to get to the right corner, and the hypotenuse is always the longest side of a right triangle, right? That's why it looks smaller on the left. But, what about here?

I added some fill-light to make the frame stand out on the right. And it's weird. It should be largest on the right because that was closer to the camera. Yet, it's smaller on the right. And it abruptly changes. Do you see that?

Then, the far side, which should be thinnest, is the thickest. 

That is the exact opposite of how it should be. The purple frame is too thick for its size and for how far away it was from the camera. It should be the skinny end, not the thick end. And that's why we don't get any real sense of depth from looking at it.

Our minds tell us that it must be at the same depth as the side of the car because it has to be, but our eyes are telling us that it's closer to us.