How do lines that look like they meet far away make a road or a hallway look super long and deep in a photo?

Lines that appear to meet in the distance, though they are actually parallel in reality, create a powerful illusion of depth in a photo. This visual phenomenon is known as linear perspective. In scenes like a road or a hallway, the parallel edges—such as the sides of a road, or the lines where the floor meets the walls and the walls meet the ceiling in a hallway—act as converging lines. These are lines that are parallel to each other but appear to angle inwards and get closer together as they recede into the distance from the viewer. The specific point where all these parallel lines seem to meet is called the vanishing point. This vanishing point always sits on the horizon line, which is an imaginary line in the image representing the viewer's eye level. As these converging lines draw the viewer's eye towards the vanishing point, they create a strong sense of recession, or movement away from the viewer. Our brain interprets this apparent convergence as a direct indicator of distance. The visual effect of the lines narrowing and drawing closer together makes the road or hallway seem to stretch far away, creating the impression of significant length and depth within the two-dimensional image.