The concierge at my hotel in Paris (who, incidentally, could fluently speak several languages) gave me some excellent suggestions regarding moving around in Paris and interesting sights to photograph. In retrospect, most of the things he recommended turned out to be quite the opppsite (e.g. suggested metro stations were closed and supposedly photogenic sights turning out to be not so much so). He did, however, have the correct sense that timing and luck were important factors in taking a good photo. For example, he mentioned that a photo of the Eiffel Tour being struck by a lightning made the front pages of local newspapers not long ago. The Tower is the most photographed monument in the world, so for a photo of it to make front-page news requires something to be going on (in addition to the tower simply being there).
The concierge also suggested to look for a moonrise over the Notre-Dame cathedral, and I was excited to try it the same evening, because the moon was still nearly full, and I was hoping to catch it between the towers of the cathedral. Unfortunately, the location of the moonrise had shifted already, and it was no longer visible from the cathedral square. But the moon still made a spectacular appearance over the Seine river, as fellow photographers gathered on the bridges connecting ile de la Cite to the river banks to capture it.
Here is my attempt. I knew from experience that the moon needed to be exposed as a grey rock in a midday sun. This presents a dilemma if one wants to simultaneously (and correctly) expose the nigh-time scenery. Of course, taking two separate exposures and combining them in post-processing is a possibility, but if one wants to avoid compositing, it is better to underexpose the shadows and correctly expose the relatively bright moon.
