Eirini Pajak began contributing to Arizona Highways Magazine a few years ago — she was featured in It's in the Details, her portfolio in the January 2015 issue. But at least one of her photos has been in seemingly every issue since then.
Pajak's images of Arizona wildflowers feature a photographic technique known as “focus-stacking”. She shoots with the lens almost wide open, then manually focuses through the plane of the flower, one millimeter at a time. She then "stacks" the images using a computer program. Doing so allows her to control the depth of field in the background and get focus through the subject. These layers are as many as 52 and exceeding 150 per image the viewer sees.
Pajak studied photography in college but didn't keep up with it after she graduated. A decade later, a monk at St. Anthony's Monastery in Florence, where Pajak often attends services, suggested she start photographing wildflowers. "He added, specifically, not to overlook even the tiniest flowers," she says. That suggestion has shaped her photographic style.
"I've seen so many amazing images of poppies and lupines, but there is a whole world of neglected — and often quite tiny — flowers that are no less beautiful," she says.
