Jessica McDaniel

Baby & Family Photographer

More than 3 years

Milton - I grew up here and once I had my own family we moved back here, I just adore it. Both my parents live within a mile of my house, can't beat it.

I absolutely have grown personally and professionally due to the success of Boston Baby Photos. Twenty years ago I was a single, childless, night school grad student in BU's MBA program, and now here I am, loving this job I do -- I've completely become the woman I am because of doing this thing I love for the last 20 years. And May 15, 2023 is the actual exact date of my 20th anniversary in business! It's the date 20 years ago when I started my business checking account, so that's the date I use as my ``business birthday``.

Loving work every day? Being just absolutely thrilled to do my job every day I do it? That's success to me, and I'm absolutely here.

When covid hit, we photographers were knocked on our butts. We all had to completely reimagine how to do what we do. Pivoting that year (I did social distancing outdoor minishoots all year - I took photos of babies outdoors on roofdecks in Southie in the middle of the heat of July and I shot through windows into families' homes in February in their front hallways to maintain distance)... helped me identify what I love most about my business. I just adore being with families... and documenting their time together. Now that I'm back in families' homes it just means so much to be there for those special times. Indoors. 🙂

My biggest challenge for Boston Baby Photos was definitely 2020 & 2021, due to covid and due to needing to completely shift the way I photograph babies and families. I bought a zoom lens and shot from a distance... brought babies outdoors... it was cold and hot and stressful and hard... but wow, it made me appreciate how much I love what I do when I'm able to go indoors and get that relaxed special time with families.

Absolutely. I have connected with so many extraordinary female entrepreneurs in BBW - I am inspired daily by their wisdom. It means so much to me to be part of this group of wonderful business women.

This year, on March 7th, I pulled off a kind of epic, extraordinary day. I wanted to host a 20th birthday party for my business, and I thought the coolest way to do that would be to hire a photographer (I chose the ever-fabulous Mariah Gale, branding photographer extraordinaire) to photograph me taking pictures of babies.

Boy, oh boy, was it amazing. Nearly 100 families applied to model for me, and selecting the eleven models for the session was the first challenge - my GOODNESS I just love babies and every single one who applied was perfect! But I put together some really specific age parameters and was able to confirm three tiny newborns, three babies who were about six months old and three babies approaching their first birthday, in addition to two gorgeous women who were expecting a baby. Shockingly, we only had one baby drop out at the last minute due to illness (which meant that at 11pm on the night before the session I'm messaging with a mama who was able to drop everything and bring her babe with her to the studio the following day - bless her!)... and after it was all done I said to Mariah and our assistants that it felt like we'd danced this beautiful dance in the two hours we were there... it was 100% magic.

We set the models up around the room in different spots and I bopped from one beautiful baby to the next, as one mama gave their babe a bath, another would spoon feed their baby some mango... and a third would be helping their one year old walk while holding hands with her over near a pretty window... and then that group of babies would be done and we'd bring in the next group. It was extraordinary, speedy, lovely, intense... and at the end we got lots of the babies to sit on a couch with me and take a group photo.

After I handed the babies back to their parents my eyes just completely filled with tears. Everything about that moment felt like such a mountain I'd climbed - all those years of all those babies I've just adored... and being able to celebrate twenty years in this magical way, it was truly just everything.

She's an extroverted introvert. Or maybe an introverted extrovert? Depends on the day, but I love salt, I love being super organized and also totally messy... I love the smell of my nieces' and nephew's little necks when I snuggle them (I just dropped my dog over at their house this morning and they all piled on top of me with their morning deliciousness and squeezed me so hard... it was the best). I love my two daughters and my adorable husband with all my heart... I spend my free time obsessing over minutia and my family would tell you I'm intolerable when it comes to getting ready to go on a trip... but once we're there (sigh, a week in Martha's Vineyard every summer) lying on a hammock sketching with a charcoal pencil or reading a Jodi Piccolt novel... that's my happy place. I love my people fiercely, I do things quickly, and it's hard to offend me. I'm pretty sure (now that I understand myself better) that I'm ADHD, but it's made me a better business woman because I can harness the laser focus that happens when I'm in the zone and make fabulous things happen.