This is a midnight picture taken from Les Halles of the Palais Royale with the moon rising behind it. The camera is obviously on full telephoto.
I was out with the tripod that night, which led to an unfortunate incident. A pair of Italian teenagers saw that I was taking a picture of la luna and eventually got across to me that they'd like a picture of them taken with their cell phone. That was no problem, but a group of drunken (?) partiers crashed the scene before I could snap a picture. They were likely harmless, but after they had milled around for a while I became concerned that one of them was going to run off with my camera, which was behind me on the tripod. I hurriedly gave the phone back to the Italians, picked up the camera, and headed off.
The Italians were upset when they looked at the camera and realized there was no picture of them. I don't blame them. But I'd do it again.
That moon is setting, I think.
Was this the most alarming thing you've gotten into while roaming around in the dead of night?
That’s alright. Doubt they’d expect much from an American these days anyway.
Returned after several hours, but trying to see the perspective as art, still find it makes me faintly uncomfortable, almost as if from vertigo, or walking off a pier in the dark. Wish that hadn't been my reaction.
Now you have me looking at the dome and seeing a walkway into the darkness...
Interesting. I wasn't aware the Palais Royale has a dome. You sure this isn't the Bourse?
Yes, that's the dome over the Bourse de Commerce, not the Palais Royale. And as Jerry O'Brien notes in a different comment here, since the view is to the west, the moon is setting, not rising.