To answer your question about photography:

since the shutter is open for so long, the aperture which controls the amount of light entering through to lens to be exposed onto the film or sensor, depending on whether it's digital or not, does not allow much light to enter, or else the image would be overexposed. Since it's night time and there's not much light, only very bright objects or objects that sit in the same spot for a long time will be visible in the photo. Since aircraft lights are very bright, the light makes it's way through the aperture easily so the lights are exposed to the film/sensor more easily than the fuselage will be. So the lights are seen better in the image than the less light fuselage.

That's about the best explanation I can give you off the top of my head, it's been a while since photo class.