Behind the bike

22-year-old Photography Studies College (PSC) graduate Rachel Hickey has combined her passions of cycling and photography through a stunning series of images exploring life both on and off the bike.

Growing up in Camperdown in southwestern Victoria, Rachel said whether it was following family members around the country to races and events or competing herself, she had always been surrounded by cycling.

Equally passionate about photography, she said during her first two years she would travel five hours a day on the train from Camperdown just to make the journey to PSC, before relocating to Melbourne in 2016.

Hence, she said it was a natural fit to combine her two passions as part of her graduating folio, which initially began by capturing the usual aspects one would associate with cycling.

“I just wanted to talk about this community of cycling because it’s so different,” she said. “I grew up with this and I know it sounds simple but I just want to talk about what this is actually like.”

“I’d go to my teacher and bring in a few hundred photos each time and it was all of people racing because I wanted to shoot speed and get that really crisp line. She would look through them and just say ‘no what else have you got?’”

“I started looking at everything behind it, as in what don’t people look at when you first think of cycling. I tried to push that first idea and make people see past that.”

Having undertaken a bachelor of photography majoring in photojournalism, this shift in her approach to capturing the community she was so passionate produced fascinating insight for others to see into her world.

From cyclists snacking on almonds to tending to injured feet after a crash, she said her folio, which focused specifically on track cycling in a velodrome, had helped her see things in a different way.

“In my series there is not a single photo of a bike,” she said. “I just put in lots of little things and let people make up their own minds and tried and have a neutral approach.”

Having known she wanted to be a photographer since from a very young age, Rachel enrolled in PSC straight after completing high school and said she had loved her experience at the college.

Having graduated last year, she is now working for a production company in Richmond and has continued her involvement at PSC through its alumni program and provides mentoring to current students through PSC Pals.

“It’s been nice to be apart of the PSC community,” she said. “With the PSC Alumni it’s a very different feeling from the PSC pals because everyone has been here and has left and doing different things but it’s nice to bond over our experiences.”

To view more of Rachel’s work visit

rachelhickey.com.au