This one really struck me too. I think of it from the point of view of the emitter, which is surrounded by a sphere of every final destination of a photon in ev

This one really struck me too. I think of it from the point of view of the emitter, which is surrounded by a sphere of every final destination of a photon in every direction, with no distance in between. The photon itself, from its own perspective, is born and immediately dies, having stepped across the 0-length gap between emitter and absorber.