Odyssey (noun): a long series of wanderings or adventures, especially when filled with notable experiences.
Growing up in northern New Jersey, we had abundant opportunities to be outdoors. Hiking, swimming, fishing, traversing streams and creeks, and building forts in the woods were all regular activities. We found solace and comfort in a rocky ledge overlooking rolling mountains in any season.
Our parents wanted us to experience the world and see the country. From major cities to national parks, the five of us spent our summers driving all over North America. Capturing our adventures using our father’s 35mm Nikon was an integral part of each trip. During our travels our mother fostered a curiosity for the natural world, teaching us the importance of environmental stewardship and conservation.
Fast-forward 20 years: Ed was working in northern Nevada and was awestruck by the beauty of the west. He got his first Nikon dSLR in 2009 and started High Desert Twilight Photography. Greg picked up his first Nikon a few years later and started OdysseyFive Photography to document his adventures from the east coast. After a successful joint photography trip to Yellowstone in 2017, we merged our portfolios to become a single entity.
As visual storytellers it is our mission to foster that same curiosity that was instilled in us and show the importance of environmental stewardship and conservation through our photography.
EDWARD TESTER
From a young age, I was interested in dinosaurs. Driven by National Geographic articles and Jurassic Park, I attended college for geology with a specific focus on paleontology. That degree took me west for research and conferences, where I saw the beauty of vast desert landscapes in Utah and the majestic peaks of the Rockies in Colorado. After graduation, I moved to Nevada for work. My three-month summer job turned into 13 years while I worked at an underground gold mine, so I had lots of time to explore. From the freeway, Nevada is a desolate, empty, boring landscape. But tucked into the snow-capped peaks of the mountains are diverse and amazing gems: Lamoille Canyon, Blue Lakes, the Black Rock Desert, the Humboldt River, Great Basin National Park. I was inspired to share the beauty of this new place to friends and family back east.
I specialize in wide-angle panoramic landscapes. Wildlife and bird photography were natural accompaniments later on. In addition to nature and wildlife, I am an accomplished mining photographer, capturing the people, equipment, and processes that provide materials for the modern world.
Editor-in-Chief
GREGORY TESTER
Social Media ManagerI’ve always been fascinated by wildlife. Though I wasn’t the best student in school, I learned a lot about animals and the environment outside the classroom through documentaries, books, family vacations, and magazines like National Geographic. Any class involving the environment or animals had my full attention, and I excelled in those. This passion caught the attention of a teacher, who invited me to join a research project documenting kestrel populations in northwest New Jersey. Alongside visiting national parks, this experience naturally evolved into a love for photography, where I focus on capturing animals in action. The more I photographed wildlife, the further from home it took me—first to New Jersey and New York, then to Maine, and after my first trip to Yellowstone, I was hooked. Since then, I’ve spent my vacations traveling to more distant places like The Galápagos Islands, Kenya, and The Philippines. My passion for wildlife photography has only grown and I continue to explore new places to see more of the natural world. I also enjoy capturing people through my lens, documenting the lives of those who live and work alongside the places animals call home.
I specialize in wildlife and bird photography. Taking pictures of people has become a secondary passion. I especially enjoy capturing scientists at work in the field and locals going about their daily lives.
The Adventure is Born
What do the snowy mountains of Yellowstone and the sunny plains of the Maasai Mara have in common?
Very little, unless you consider the abundance of wildlife that each has to offer. For us, Yellowstone and the Mara are intimately intertwined.
It's mid-September 2017. Greg and I are on our first joint photo trip in Yellowstone. The weather has shifted from gorgeous and sunny to a dismal gray. In the early afternoon we returned to camp from Norris Basin wet, cold, and hungry. We spent the rest of the day standing around the campfire drying our shoes, sharing some stories, desires, beer, and splitting the cost of buying more and more firewood.
This is where the idea for Africa was born. We were lamenting the lack of wildlife we had seen and one of us said:
"Dude, we need to go on safari if we wanna put those big lenses to use."
So there we were less than two years later on a warm, sunny afternoon on the banks of the Talek River in the Maasai Mara watching a pride of lions kill and eat a juvenile wildebeest. We were more than 10,000 miles from Yellowstone, but connected through an idea that was born out of a snowy afternoon, a crackling fire, and a shared love of adventure and photography.
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