Boston Baby Photos Blog » photos by Jessica McDaniel

In the spring of 2003 I was working full time as the Director of Project Management in the interactive division of a Boston marketing agency.  I liked my job, but I didn’t love my job.  I lived with my boyfriend, Evan, in a two family apartment in Cambridge.  I went to school at night at BU – I was finishing my MBA program, hoping that a degree like that would help me get to the next place I wanted to be in life… Not so sure what that next place was.  My shoulders hurt at night when I went to bed because I stayed up too late doing homework.  Back then my job didn’t make me giggle much.

I was 27 years old.

On May 25, 2003, after writing my business plan and taking pictures of friends’ children here and there, I had my first paying photoshoot.  It was a coworker’s son, and he was just six weeks old.  The following weekend I shot a five month old.  Then the next weekend I tried my hand at a two year old.  Then a seven year old and her sister.  And so on.

Now, fast-forward seven and a half years, and I work full time for myself, and I have an assistant and a bookkeeper who together help me run this crazy business called Boston Baby Photos. I live with my husband, Evan, in a four bedroom house in Milton.  We have two girls, a five year old and a one and half year old, and now instead of going to school at night, I parent teach every month or so in my daugher’s co-op nursery school.  Now instead of my shoulders hurting from stress and homework, my knees get sore from crawling around my clients’ living room floors.  I have a waiting list of families who want me to take their picture before Christmas.  And best of all, I giggle pretty much every day.

I’m 35 now.

And on October 24, 2010, this coming Sunday, I will have my one thousandth photoshoot.  It’s been a long road, I’ve wiped a lot of noses, made a lot of fart noises, and done many a silly dance.  And I wouldn’t change a moment of it.

Thank you to the hundreds of families who’ve helped me make it to this really cool milestone.  One thousand seems like a really big number.

I raise my (I was going to say glass of wine, but let’s be honest) daughter’s unfinished sippy cup of milk (cut me some slack, the wine’s in the kitchen, this one’s right here next to me on the couch) in a toast.

To giggling.  And to many thousands more.