FINDING something you love doing and making it a career isn't easy. Finding two things, and combining them to make a career, is almost unheard of.
Everline Studios in Belmont represents that synthesis for ballet dancer turned photographer, Jacqueline Mitchell, whose career has seen more than a few pirouettes and the odd stumble.
"When I was three, there was another little girl at preschool that would get ready for ballet every afternoon. According to Mum, I desperately wanted to get the ballet uniform on and go just from that. After a year of me begging, she put me in classes with Tessa Maunder in New Lambton," Mitchell says.
The discipline, expression and panache that ballet offered was intoxicating, quickly overtaking that early aesthetic appeal and becoming a core component of her identity.
"It was consuming my life from eight. By then I was probably training four to five days a week," she says.
She then moved to Robyn Turner Ballet School in Charlestown, and was later accepted into the Australian Ballet Interstate Program. At age 14, the time when most kids are thinking about high-school electives, she was faced with a choice.
"At that point, you have to make the decision whether you're going to make this a career or not. I decided yes," she says.
"So I changed schools at this point and went over to Marie Walton-Mahon Dance Academy in Lambton, and I got a full scholarship to train full-time there."
Forgoing the chance to complete the HSC and instead receive a Diploma in Professional Dance, Mitchell was further immersed in intense training. Here, aspiration and desperation often dangerously overlap, as dancers push their bodies to extremes.
When she was 16 it all came crashing down. She tore her left and right hip flexors, ending her ballet career before it had started.
"I shouldn't have been as injured as I was. It's so important to get the right training, to not push your body at such a young age because you're so vulnerable," she says with compassion for her younger self, more than any residual anger.
While her classmates looked to renowned dance companies for their next gigs, Mitchell, who was still able to dance, took a contract dancing on a cruise ship and moved to Miami to rehearse before spending 10 months on the water, visiting 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific.
The time spent on the ship exposed her to the world of professional dance outside of ballet, and roused a desire to travel. In 2012, aged 19, she moved to London.
During this time Mitchell starred in music videos for grime artists, flew to Shanghai to dance at the unveiling of a Jaguar car, performed at the International Contemporary Dance Festival in Algiers, Algeria, where her troupe won the 'Prix du Jury' Award.
"For two years, every single week I was doing something exciting," she says.
Among the jet-setting and awards, one particular event stands out - performing for and meeting Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney at a glamorous Conference of the Earth gala in honour of his late wife Linda.
"It was amazing. They put on this massive ball. [Punk icon and designer] Vivienne Westwood was right in front of me in the front row. We pretty much performed all night and Paul was amazing, he was so nice," she says.
COMING HOME
When her UK visa expired, Mitchell moved back to Australia. With limited freelance dance opportunities available here, she began teaching ballet at the prestigious Tanya Pearson Academy in Sydney.
The nomadic dance life was on hold for now but, while she was teaching, an old hobby and a leap of faith set her on a path that she would follow for the next decade.
From 16 Mitchell always had a camera by her side. She picked up the hobby in school, and revelled in the freedom it offered as opposed to the rigours of ballet training. She'd shoot friends, landscapes, musicians, while experimenting with 35-millimetre film.
Shed quickly rose through the ranks to become principal at Tanya Pearson Academy and she saw the potential overlap between her side hustle and her studies.
"The girls at Tanya Pearson would get their audition photos taken by another photographer, and, as their teacher, I would look over them. So often all of the technique was off. They just didn't look great when they were actually great dancers," she says.
At this time in Sydney, Mitchell had taken her photography to the next level shooting fashion campaigns, including one for Calvin Klein, artist portraits, models and more.
She took on her first shoot with a student under what would become Everline Imagery, and she never looked back.
"It honestly just went from zero to 100 in six months. Within two years it was my full-time income," she says.
Despite her prowess behind the camera and intimate understanding of ballet, there were still plenty of hurdles during the teething stages of running her first real business.
"I had to work so hard to be a ballet dancer for my whole life, and then the photography just happened quite easily, I almost feel like I'm an impostor, like I don't deserve it," she says.
THE NEWCASTLE MOVE
Mitchell and her fiance Will moved back to Newcastle three years ago which meant a lot of driving to Sydney to use studios and shoot. When they had their baby boy, Dashiell, it became almost impossible.
"I was looking for a studio in Newcastle that could accommodate the shoots that I was doing. I needed a big cyclorama and a lot of lighting," she says. "Then the stars aligned, and earlier this year a little bike shop down the road from my house went up for lease. It had the perfect proportions for a big corner cyclorama and space to store a lot of gear. So I just did it."
Everline Studios opened in March at Belmont.
"There is actually a huge creative hub in Lake Macquarie and Newcastle. I've had everything from florists to people making their own bedding booking the studio. And there are a lot of brilliant photographers in Newcastle that have been hiring it for family portraits, business branding, and everything in between which is amazing."
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