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Shifting Landscapes

Visual Art and Photography by Al Keddie — Abstract Painting, Digital Art, ICM, Landscape, and Urban Street Works from Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand

selected works

  • Oh!

    A black and white photo-montage of layered street scenes, with a vendor bending over equipment at right, overlapping images of bagged produce, Japanese packaging, a bare white tree, and a masked figure at left.
    Oh!

    Oh! is part of Dimension Shift, a series of black-and-white photo-montages that combine collage, layered imagery and multiple exposure. Drawn from street and travel encounters, mainly here from a visit to Japan, the photographic source material is transformed rather than simply documented.

    In Oh!, a street food vendor bends over his work, the clearest figure in a scene that dissolves into overlapping, darkly surreal imagery. Produce bags, packaging printed with “Oh!”, price tags, a stark white tree, a masked face and clusters of people crowd the frame. Rather than forming a single place or moment, these layers create a dense shorthand for street life, travel and dream.

    SELECTED WORKS: SHIFT

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  • Great Wave (after Hokusai)

    An abstract iPhone photograph using intentional camera movement and glitch effects, with a large pale blue and lavender wave-like form arching across the frame above fractured glitch artefacts in gold and dark tones.
    Great Wave (after Hokusai)

    Quite a dramatic image being formed here and stood out for that towering wave of neon light throwing all sorts of glitchy pattern into the night sky so strangely reminiscent of another.

    Great Wave (after Hokusai) is from a series of Compression Landscapes and is an abstract digital photograph made using intentional camera movement and glitch created in-camera on iPhone.

    SELECTED WORKS: SHIFT

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  • Caledonian Pine, Loch Tulla

    Black-and-white photograph of a Caledonian pine at Loch Tulla, silhouetted against water and distant hills. Twisted branches spread widely above small islands, woodland and a softly illuminated Highland backdrop.
    Caledonian Pine, Loch Tulla
    (3:45pm Wed 1st Dec 2004)
    Scotland

    Always liked this image and the amount of subtle textural detail still present in the shadows despite the much reduced exposure.

    Caledonian Pine, Loch Tulla is a black-and-white photograph depicting a stunted Scots pine on the shoreline of Loch Tulla in the Scottish Highlands. An early landscape from 2004, this was resurrected a few years back as part of a series of dark Scottish landscapes (ALBA DUBH) that took a group of images from that period and grew into a reflection on memory and home. The title’s include the date and time of capture as a way of locating them at a fixed point in the past.

    SELECTED WORKS: LANDSCAPE

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  • Mushroom Clouds and Water Fights Unite!

    A digital abstract painting on an orange ground with jagged black forms, a central mask-like head surrounded by geometric markings, and a white mushroom cloud shape billowing up the right side.
    Mushroom Clouds And Water Fights Unite! (2026)

    Mushroom Clouds and Water Fights Unite! is a digital abstract painting set against a burning orange ground, where jagged black structures slice through vivid blue, crimson red, and white forms to say something about system collapse and conflict in the wake of the surprise American and Israeli attack on Iran, the full blown bombing campaign and war, and subsequent repercussions in the Middle East.

    SELECTED WORKS: PAINT

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  • Wind Shakes Tree

    An impressionistic iPhone photograph of spindly trees blurred by camera movement, their foliage and trunks streaked in amber and rust against a pale grey-blue sky, with dark green shrubs below.
    Wind Shakes Tree

    Wind Shakes Tree is an intentional camera movement (ICM) landscape photograph captured on iPhone, showing a small group of trees in motion against a pale grey-blue sky. Camera movement draws the foliage and trunks into vertical streaks of amber, rust and olive, with spindly trunks glowing warm orange in the early light. Captured with iPhone near Cathedral Cove on the Coromandel.

    I can’t remember whether the wind was shaking the trees in of this painterly photograph, but the impression of movement remains strong.

    SELECTED WORKS: ICM

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  • Rangitoto Echo

    A black and white long exposure photograph of a crater-like foreground rock at Narrow Neck Beach, with the dormant volcanic island of Rangitoto as a low dark silhouette on the horizon and the water softened to mist.
    The dormant volcanic cone of Rangitoto finds strange echo on the rocky shore

    Rangitoto Echo is a black and white long exposure landscape photograph looking out toward Rangitoto, the dormant volcanic island offshore of Auckland and was made in 2011, shortly after arriving in Aotearoa New Zealand.

    I was stoked to discover this location, particularly the crater-like rock formation in the foreground with its uncanny echo of the dormant volcanic cone out on the horizon. The long exposure adds a surreal and ethereal quality to the scene, especially in the fog-like sea and whilst black and white is, for me the definitive version, I still I still have a strong affection for the colour version below.

    Serene coastal landscape with cracked foreground rocks, smooth misty water, and a distant island silhouette beneath soft pastel sunrise or sunset light.
    Rangitoto Twilight (2011)

    I continued making this type of long-exposure landscape work for some time after, but as circumstances changed, opportunities became fewer. Over the time since, my practice has continually adapted and shifts now towards more abstract and movement-based approaches. Still, I do hope one day to return to these still captures.

    Rangitoto Island from Narrow Neck
    Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland
    Aotearoa New Zealand
    November 2011
    17mm | Canon 5D MkII + 10ND | 301 sec @ f16 / ISO100

    SELECTED WORKS: LANDSCAPE

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