A blessing in disguise led Osborne Macharia to pursue photography. “I failed a unit in my fourth year of studying for a degree in architecture and had to stay out for an academic year,” he recalls. “During that year, I stumbled upon the photography of Joey L. That was when I knew I wanted to follow this path.” Completely self-taught, Macharia turned his passion into a creative career and has gone on to shoot for various high-profile clients, including Guinness, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Co., Volkswagen, Kenya Airways, Oxfam and Samsung. Highly inspired by the stories surrounding him in Kenya, he bases his projects’ concepts on three principles: identity, fiction and culture. “Africa has tons of stories that the world doesn’t know about,” he says. “As a continent, we have our issues—but that’s not all there is to see. A lot of times, we are misunderstood. My work intends to change that misconception by showcasing what’s around me in the most aesthetically spectacular way possible.”