The "length" of the photon is very short. There is not a long wave like you are thinking, like a wave on a string.
Take a short string and pull it over a sine wave. At any instant in time, one part of the string will be high, another part low. As you pull it, the position changes, but the sun total of all the "heights" in the sine wave is always the same, no matter what part of the sine wave you start at.
So you can think of a photon like that: As it snakes it's way through space, it doesn't actually move up and down, but rather as it progresses the front of it will sometimes be "high" and sometimes "low".
Take a hose and wave it in the air, to make a sine wave of water. Now think of each molecule of water - every single molecule only moves forward in a perfectly straight line! None of them move side of side. Yet it looks that way, but it's really new molecules, some of them are moving here and some there.
The "length" of the photon is very short. There is not a long wave like you are thinking, like a wave on a string.
Take a short string and pull it over a sine wave. At any instant in time, one part of the string will be high, another part low. As you pull it, the position changes, but the sun total of all the "heights" in the sine wave is always the same, no matter what part of the sine wave you start at.
So you can think of a photon like that: As it snakes it's way through space, it doesn't actually move up and down, but rather as it progresses the front of it will sometimes be "high" and sometimes "low".
Take a hose and wave it in the air, to make a sine wave of water. Now think of each molecule of water - every single molecule only moves forward in a perfectly straight line! None of them move side of side. Yet it looks that way, but it's really new molecules, some of them are moving here and some there.