‘It looked like an alien landscape’: Sheldon Serkin’s best phone picture

For a street photographer in a New York zoo, wildlife and children came together brilliantly

It happens to be his daughter Tess's 16th birthday on the day I speak with Sheldon Serkin about this photograph, which he took when Tess (on right) was just six. Sheldon and his wife, Tali, had taken Tess and her older brother, Elliot, to visit an exhibition at New York's Bronx zoo when they came upon the prairie dog enclosure.

I wanted to take a photo of these bubbles in the ground, which visitors can climb up into as though they are in with the animals," Serkin says. It looked like an alien landscape to me. I framed the shot without the surrounding spectators, and as one of the prairie dogs took centre stage, children popped up in all three bubbles. It was brilliant timing and made an even better photo than I had anticipated."