I have never taken photos of 'dangerous' animals (lions, grizzlies etc). How do you stay safe? Are you in a vehicle? Make sure you can outrun the slowest person in your group?
Happy you like the image.
These days I can't out run anything. Yes, many times we are in vehicles out on game drives. I have often done game walks as well. In such cases we are relying on two things. The animals are reasonably acclimated to seeing people. So like swimming with sharks we know that they don't see us as food. Also we or our guides understand behaviors and are armed.
Having spent a lot of time outside game parks I have had a number of encounters withe very wild animals. Even then, they mostly want to be well away from you.