One of the first things I noticed when looking at Chicago in satellite view a long time ago is Lake Michigan was frozen in some places and not in others, and the seams were extremely obvious. You can find that on land too, where there is snow in one part, and suddenly there is none. Check out the coast here: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=chicago,+il&t=k&ll=41.87282,-87.603521&spn=0.046911,0.107546&t=k

The water changes abruptly, and you can see color variations. The perspective seam you show is even better in how it was actually cut to fit (since it's not a straight-line cutoff)

Lake Michigan actually freezes off the coast of Chicago? wow... i didn't know that. if it was frozen... wouldn't it be a little more white?... just wondering.

hell if i was to know because i'm in sunny san diego.

More chicago craziness (not too far from sears tower):

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=chicago,+il&t=k&ll=41.879974,-87.63062&spn=0.001482,0.003382&t=k

pacificdave: No, I don't believe the lake freezes off the coast of Chicago...I was looking at Chicago from a zoomed out view and could see ice on Northern parts of the lake. But it looks like Google has since updated images because I don't see that now. There's still abrupt differences in the water due to different areas being taken at different times of day. You can see ripples from boats (or wind) get cut off or change direction at the seams, and more sun reflected in some portions versus others.

What Travis, Niraj and others have noticed is quite common in the GIS/ Remote Sensing arena. Images are 'mosaiced' to cover large areas, and the images that may be usuable (i.e. less cloud/ haze) may be from different times of the year. A satellite whizzing around the world taking the images may not be able to be at *exactly* the same viewpoint it was over a certain target each time it circles the planet – so its 'look angle' is often slightly different each time. High resolution imagery (~1m) is detailed enough that this subtle variation in look angle will cause objects such as a building to be seen more on one side or the other, and appear to lean differently in images taken at different times.

FWIW, many of the 'Satellite' photos are really taken from a plane/helicopter, which obviously means larger displacement of roof versus basement.
This is a bit of back-of-envelope -calculation, but if 300m high building has a 20m displacement of roof versus basement, it means that if it's at the extent of image, atan(20/300)*180/PI*2 (~7.6 degrees) will give us Angle of View for the capturing device.

For 35mm film a lens with focal length of 300mm will have that. AFAIK aerial photography often employs larger format, for example 4x5, which would demand a 1200mm lens. To capture area with width of 2km, would require altitude of 15km (which does sound a bit on a high side).
(remember, paper, back, calculation etc. :)