Robert Sinclair's Image

There must be thousands of images of the thermal Morning Glory Pool, taken in daylight by visitors to Yellowstone National Park in the USA.

Some seven metres in diameter, the pool is home to thermophilic bacteria that thrive in the heat and give the pool its extraordinary colours. To capture the scene in a new and dramatic way, Robert waited for a warm autumn night and then carefully positioned two flashlights to illuminate the details of the inner walls beneath the star-filled sky. ‘To minimise interference from steam rising off the surface, I had to wait for the breeze to blow it away from the camera,’ he says. After three hours, he got the shot he wanted, of a giant eye staring up at the Milky Way, looking for all the world as though it might, at any moment, blink.