ARB 50 Year Anniversary Series: Africa
Seven Days. 2,560km. Botswana.
Client
End Brand
ARB 4x4 Accessories
Project
ARB 50 Year Anniversary Series — Africa (Botswana) Official Photography
Year
2025
Location
Botswana — Khama Rhino Sanctuary · Maun & Okavango Delta · Khwai Concession, Moremi Game Reserve · Francistown
Services
Official Expedition Photography · Overland Documentary Photography · Full Gallery Delivery
The Brief
ARB 4x4 Accessories is one of the world's leading overland and 4x4 accessory brands, with five decades of product built for one purpose: getting vehicles — and the people in them — further into the places most vehicles can't go. In 2025, ARB marked their 50th anniversary with a series of special expedition trips, each designed to put the brand and its people back into the landscapes that defined it.
The Africa Series — a seven-day overland expedition through Botswana — was the first international trip in the 50 Year Anniversary Series. Haskin Studios commissioned me as the official photographer for the journey. The brief was to document ARB's product in context: a fully equipped convoy moving through 2,560 kilometres of southern Africa, from Johannesburg through the Botswana bush and back. Vehicles loaded. Terrain genuine. No studio required.
The Approach
Overland documentary photography at this scale doesn't work from the outside. You can't cover a seven-day expedition by meeting the convoy at the highlights. You have to be embedded in it — moving with the group, sharing the same camps, covering the same kilometres, and being in position when the light, the terrain, and the wildlife align in ways you can't predict or repeat.
I travelled with the ARB group for all seven days — from Johannesburg to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, northwest to Maun and the Okavango Delta, into the Khwai Concession and Moremi Game Reserve for three full days, and back to Johannesburg via Francistown. The photographic priorities were consistent across the route: vehicle and product in terrain as the primary subject, the human story of the trip as the narrative thread, and the landscape and wildlife of Botswana as the context that no brand brief could manufacture.
The creative discipline in expedition photography is restraint. The temptation is to chase every landscape and every wildlife encounter separately. The brief requires something harder: keeping the product in frame and in purpose without forcing it into every shot. ARB's vehicles are built for this terrain. The photography had to show that — not state it.
The Production
Seven days on the road through Botswana. 2,560 kilometres. Johannesburg to Khama Rhino Sanctuary, Maun, Khwai Concession, Francistown, and back.
Day 1 — Johannesburg to Khama Rhino Sanctuary, Serowe
The convoy crossed into Botswana and made its first stop at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary — a private game reserve in Serowe, established to protect white and black rhino. Opening-day coverage: convoy on the road, the first crossing into Botswana, vehicles arriving into camp, and the first evening light in the bush. The trip begins here.
Day 2 — Khama Rhino Sanctuary to Maun, Okavango Delta
The longest transit of the trip — northwest through Botswana to Maun, the gateway to the Okavango Delta. Crocodile Camp provided the overnight base on the water's edge. The Delta fringe around Maun is one of the most visually distinctive environments in southern Africa: the vehicles at the intersection of road, water, and sky, with the delta spreading behind them. This was the transition frame between the open road and the deep bush ahead.
Days 3-5 — Khwai Concession, Moremi Game Reserve
Three days in the Khwai Concession and Moremi Game Reserve — rooftop tents above the vehicles, game drives through one of Africa's most biodiverse wildlife areas, and the kind of encounters that exist nowhere else on the continent. Elephants moving through the convoy at close range. Lions in the early morning. Hippos in the channels. Crocodiles on the banks. Giraffes clearing the treeline.
This was the photographic centrepiece of the trip: the full ARB vehicle kit in its element, surrounded by wildlife and immersed in the bush that defines what the brand was built for. Three days of coverage — morning and evening light, camp life, game drives, and the quiet in-between moments that make an expedition what it is.
Day 6 — Khwai Concession to Francistown
The route south from the concession to Francistown — transiting out of Moremi and back toward the main road network. Long convoy road frames, the vehicles carrying the evidence of the terrain they'd covered, and the quieter documentary moments that characterise the final stretch of an expedition. The bush gives way to the road. The trip shifts into its closing chapter.
Day 7 — Francistown to Johannesburg
The return leg, crossing back into South Africa. The final frames of a seven-day journey documented from departure to return — vehicles back where they started, the kilometres logged, the trip complete.
Deliverables
Full photography gallery — complete documentary coverage of the seven-day ARB 50 Year Anniversary Africa expedition, from Johannesburg departure to return: vehicle and product in terrain across the full Botswana route, camp life, wildlife encounters, landscape, and the human story of the trip. Delivered to Haskin Studios for ARB deployment.
Outcome
ARB and Haskin Studios received a complete photographic record of their first international 50th anniversary expedition — the vehicles doing exactly what they were built to do, in terrain that makes the case without a single word of copy. Seven days of overland photography across 2,560 kilometres of Botswana: the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, the Okavango Delta, the Khwai Concession, Moremi Game Reserve, and the road between them.
Seven days. 2,560 kilometres. Everything covered.
Need a photographer who travels the distance — literally?
Or email me directly — studio@kevinsawyer.co.za