Shotography: Twelve Signs, Two Voices, and a Way Back to Creating

Sometimes you need to make something just for yourself

What interested me about Sean Higgins wasn't just that he'd released an album with AI-generated music. It was the story of how he got there.

Sean is a Melbourne-based videographer and creative director who has spent about fifteen years filming musicians, dancers and other performers. Under the Shotography name, he's worked on music videos, performances and commercial projects. So when he introduced me to ASTRAL—his first album released as Shotography, with twelve songs inspired by the zodiac—I was curious about what happens when someone who's spent years helping other artists bring their ideas to life decides to make a project of his own.

The more Sean told me, the more that question changed. This wasn't a carefully mapped-out career move from video into music. It began with burnout, a demanding software project, and the simple need to enjoy creating again.

The project that drained him—and the one that brought him back

Sean had been developing an application called Syncopate It, which he told me he had just launched. The idea is practical: videographers shoot footage to a piece of music, and the application uses an algorithm to line up that footage with the track automatically instead of making the editor synchronize everything by hand. Sean has provided a public page for Syncopate It. The description and launch status come from Sean; I have not independently tested the software.

It's the kind of problem someone with Sean's background would understand. But he describes the development work as long, dry and tedious. For the first time in years, he says, he had no client work and no creative outlet. He was burnt out.

So he opened Suno and set himself a twelve-hour timer. No client brief. No project to deliver for someone else. He gave himself permission to play and make something he liked, just for the enjoyment of it.

By the following morning, Sean says he had twelve songs running through his head. He found himself wondering whether something he'd made for the enjoyment of it might actually be worth releasing.

I like that part of the story because it doesn't start with a business plan or a promise about what AI can accomplish. It starts with someone wanting his creative energy back.

The years behind the camera still matter

Sean didn't arrive at this project without years of creative decision-making behind him. His work isn't only something he described in an email; there are published production credits showing what he's been doing.

In 2025, Sean directed concert visuals for KING IV's FUNERAL show at Melbourne's 170 Russell, as documented in his own project portfolio. For Delta Goodrem's 2026 Eclipse (Steve Anderson Remix) music video, he shared creative direction with Adrian Spuria under their Syzygy credit and served as director of photography and editor; those roles are listed in the official video description. His other credited work includes director of photography and shared creative direction with Adrian on Dannii Minogue and Autone's Thinking 'Bout Us, and videography for Bouf's September 2026 dance-led campaign.

Those projects don't make him a traditional recording artist, and I'm not suggesting they do. What they demonstrate is experience making choices about timing, performance, energy, visual storytelling and the way different creative pieces fit together.

That matters when we get to Gemini. The work Sean had been doing for other artists became part of how he solved a problem in his own song.

Twelve zodiac signs, twelve people he's known

ASTRAL uses all twelve zodiac signs as the framework for its songs. But there's a personal detail behind the concept: Sean says each track is inspired by a real person he's met in the creative industry.

Sean says he chose a different genre to match each sign. That gives those memories and personalities different musical identities. One track doesn't need to sound like the next, because the people behind the ideas aren't the same. For me, that's more interesting than simply producing twelve unrelated genre experiments and putting star signs on the artwork afterward.

I don't need to settle the astrology question to appreciate what he's doing. The signs give Sean a way into stories about people he's known: what stood out about them, how he remembers them, and how those impressions might sound as music.

And then there's Gemini—the track that gave him a particularly good reason to bring his editing experience back into the room.

Why Gemini needed two voices

Sean described Gemini as “two songs pretending to be one.” That was part of what caught my attention when he first submitted it. The song was inspired by someone he met in Los Angeles while touring in 2026. What stayed with him was a sense of masculine and feminine duality, and he felt that one vocal performance couldn't express the character the way he imagined it.

He'd written the lyrics and marked two parts—Voice A and Voice B—in both the lyrics and Suno style prompt. He wanted the voices to move through the song and, at certain moments, come together in harmony. His original description also sets up a musical shift from indie-pop around 100 BPM into faster EDM and techno-rap around 140 BPM, sometimes in the middle of a line.

Here's where things got interesting. Sean tried to direct those changes in Suno, but he says the platform wouldn't reliably switch voices at the intended moments or bring them together for the harmonies he wanted.

Instead of accepting the closest result, he changed the way he built the track.

1. 1
   Start with the song's intention.

   Write the lyrics and design two contrasting vocal parts around the character's duality.

2. 2
   Try generating the performance.

   Ask Suno for the vocal switching and shared moments, then recognize that its output isn't following the structure consistently.

3. 3
   Create two usable performances.

   Generate the song with a female voice, then make a male-voice cover and export stems from both versions.

4. 4
   Take control in the edit.

   Combine the exported parts in Final Cut Pro to construct the back-and-forth performance he had been aiming for.

Sean laughed that he doesn't know how to use Logic, so his video-editing software was the tool he had. I actually think that's one of the best details in the whole story. He knew what he wanted the song to do, and he found a way to build it with something he was already comfortable using.

That's a useful distinction for anyone creating music with AI tools. You don't always need the software to deliver the finished performance in one go. Sometimes the real creative work is figuring out how to take the pieces it gives you and make them serve your original idea.

Sean's talking about AI-generated vocals and instrumentation, not two singers he recorded in a studio. The decisions about where those voices belong, and how to piece them together, were his. The production details here come from Sean's account; I haven't independently reconstructed his session.

The album doesn't stop at the audio

The other part of ASTRAL makes even more sense when you remember what Sean has spent his working life doing.

He describes the album's visual world as a brutalist art gallery filled with marble statues—one for each sign. Each character has a transformation film in which Sean becomes that sign's statue, with the matching lyric video following the next day. He says he's been using Higgsfield for the AI-generated visual elements and Final Cut Pro for the editing.

That gives the project a consistent identity without making every song or character look identical. The statue concept holds the series together, while the musical styles and individual personalities make room for variation.

Sean's rollout plan is specific, too: a new sign approximately every three days on his Instagram account. When he wrote to me on October 29, he said the Gemini transformation was already up. His scheduled rollout includes Virgo on November 5, Scorpio on November 12—his birthday—and the final Pisces installment on November 24.

Sean says the series has been scheduled through November, although those posts have not all been independently viewed. He has provided the Gemini transformation film and the official ASTRAL video playlist, which are linked below. The project’s visual elements and editing decisions are part of the creative story, not simply additional promotional material.

What I took from Sean's story

It's easy to make the conversation about AI music entirely about what a platform can generate. Sean's experience points me somewhere else.

He brought the idea for ASTRAL from his own life: people he'd met, a creative urge he hadn't been able to satisfy, and years of working with music through a camera lens. He wrote the lyrics and directed the project. When the generation tool struggled with Gemini, he found another way to put the song together. And he carried the whole thing into a visual series that draws on his professional strengths.

That doesn't tell us how an audience will respond, and I'm not going to pretend it does. The album was released on October 21, and the transformation films are rolling out through November. I'd be interested to see which characters people connect with, whether they notice the same things Sean put into the music, and what he learns from presenting the project one sign at a time.

But the personal story already works for me. Sean spent years building creative work for other people. When he needed a way back to enjoying it for himself, he didn't abandon everything he'd learned. He brought that experience with him—and made something that feels connected to his life instead of separate from it.

For me, that's the story worth following: not twelve songs created by a machine, but a creator finding a new reason to use the skills he already had.