It was amazing to see the comments roll in, from friends and strangers, saying, ‘I can’t believe you missed that, Greg’

Even people in my own office asked, “Did you really miss that?” On my Facebook page, I posted a few photos I took of the rhinos before this shot was taken, but the reality is that after you’ve taken 1,000 pictures of black rhinos mating – because they go at it for quite a long time – it gets a bit boring.

I’m a senior producer for the World Wide Fund for Nature, and I was in Kenya when this was taken, back in November. A film crew was documenting our work and I was there to help produce and do the photography. We decided to travel from the Maasai Mara to Nairobi national park to document a day in the life of Harrison Njoroge Kamande, the Kenya Wildlife Service rhino patrol leader, and his team. We wanted to capture their movements and see how they document the rhinos’ activity.

We came across the rhinos at 7am, on our first day in Nairobi national park. It’s incredibly rare to spot rhinos mating. We got to about 40 yards away. The rangers know the behaviour of the rhinos really well, and knew they wouldn’t charge, especially when they were mating. After about 45 minutes, we thought, “OK, what do we do now?” I turned to the right and started documenting the rangers instead.

So in the picture I’m photographing Harrison (who has the best teeth in Kenya) and his team partner, one of the female rangers who lives in the national park. The female rangers haven’t really been documented before, although they do exactly the same training and work as their male colleagues.

I first saw the picture when I returned to the UK about five days later. The film crew had come across the image during post-production, and sent it to me. I think it’s really lovely; it’s funny, but also gives a wider story about what goes on behind the scenes. I discussed with my team about how to use it to bring awareness of the work we’re doing. So we sent it to the press.

The Mail called me “bungling” in their headline. If they were going to use a negative word, I would have liked them to use “oblivious”: “bungling” makes me think about falling over, not missing out on something. The Metro took a more humorous angle, more “Greg, it’s behind you!”, rather than questioning my competence.

It was amazing to see the comments and messages roll in, from friends and strangers, saying, “I can’t believe you missed that, Greg.” Or “Obviously it’s Photoshopped.” It’s strange to see myself splashed across the newspapers – in an ideal world it would be my pictures in the paper, not me. But I’m happy that the picture is out there and bringing awareness to the WWF.

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I don’t look at this photo and remember being called “bungling” and “hapless” in the press – I just remember the experience. For me it’s all about rhinos in the wild and the rangers who are looking after them. It’s about getting the word out that this magnificent species needs protecting.

And Harrison told me if the two rhinos have a calf, he’s going to name it Greg.

• Are you in a famous photograph? email thatsme@theguardian.com

• This article was corrected on 7 March 2016. An earlier version had the wrong byline