Songs are like a photo. Shot at a certain time and place, snapped in a certain mood, freezing a feeling.

“Song writing is a very powerful thing,” explains Melbourne singer-songwriter Shelley Segal. “It started completely as therapy for me; to get things off my chest. I love that you can take something really negative and transform it into a work of positive art that can give others an experience of something. That’s now what my song writing is about, capturing a moment that other people can relate to.”

Singing the same songs night after night might well bore some after a while but Shelley loves the fact that they seem to constantly shift meaning.

“I’ll meet someone at a gig who will tell me a story about how a song helped them and that immediately will give me another take on the song which I can carry with me. Or something will happen to me and it changes the way I experience one of my songs completely making it feel new all over again.”

Now, not only are Shelley’s songs like a photo, but each one has these gentle, wispy tendrils tying them to each person who hears them or experiences them in a different way.

“I want my relationship with people to be based on the fact that we have the shared experience of being human,” says the guitarist.

Song writing began for Shelley Segal at age 11 when a friend, who was nine, showed her a song she’d written. When asked how she did it, the reply was simply “you just do it”. Shelley headed up to her room and put pencil to paper and has spent 10 years performing her music both in Australia and overseas.

That has included shows in China as well as writing and recording a song with world-renowned DJ Carl Cox in 2010. Chemistry was a drum and bass single from Carl’s album All Roads Lead to the Dance Floor. Shelley performed with the DJ at the Stereosonic Festival and at the iconic Billboard. A remix of Chemistry spent two weeks at number one on the techno charts.

While her politics have shifted a more to the internal musings and questions of the heart for Little March, Shelley’s “An Atheist Album” was a response to her ever-growing interest in secular activism.

Raised in a Jewish household in Melbourne, Shelley’s worldview began to change when she took biology as a high school elective, which taught her about evolution. “An Atheist Album” took her on the road in the US playing conferences and gatherings, which support humanism and atheism. She spoke and played her songs and honed much in her stage show as she revealed the inner workings of her songs.

From convention rooms to gorgeously intimate musical gatherings in lounge rooms, the singer also joined the likes of Tim Minchin on the Reason Rally in the National Mall in Washington DC to perform in front of 30,000 people. That performance sent her clip for the single “Saved” around the world.

The singer says she’ll always be interested in and passionate about issues and will want to express that in music. Indeed, she actively supports the Sweet Princess Charitable Trust, which provides music for ill children, and the Foundation Beyond Belief, a charitable foundation that focuses, encourages and demonstrates humanist generosity and compassion.

“I don’t need to be limited by genres or ideas,” she enthuses. “I like feeling free and if I want to write about love or ritual, I will.”

Like any other 25-year-old, Shelley loves to have a good time with the best of them and could probably whip you at table tennis but when it comes to her music, she’s known for over a decade this was her calling.

Shelley Segal will be performing selected dates in Australia:

Thursday January 17 – The Metro, Adelaide

Friday January 18 – The Cavern, Adelaide

Friday January 31 – Irish Murphy’s, Hobart

Tuesday February 19 – Byron Bay Brewery, Byron Bay

Wednesday February 27 – The Toff in Town, Melbourne