The Model: Lady Bladie, a Civil War reenactor and self-described "experienced queen sized model" returning to modeling after a break. She had a concept of a lonely Civil War era woman waiting for her man to return to the homestead, inspired in part by the period-accurate fence that separates this property from the road. The last few shots in each gallery are taken at this fence.

The Challenge: Pulling off a Civil War era period shoot at an actual Civil War farm with tourists swarming the place.

The BIGGER Challenge: Including a number of topless shots.

The Location: Best Farm, one of the more heavily-visited sections of the Monocacy National Battlefield in Frederick, MD. This location is literally wedged between Maryland State Route 355 (aka Urbana Pike) and Interstate 270.

The Shoot: February 18th, 2012. Despite being mid-February, the weather was sunny and in the 60s (not that unusual for central Maryland), and since it was a Saturday, this all made for a GREAT day for tourists to visit...which only made our job more difficult. At any given time there was an average of 8 tourists wandering about, and 3-4 cars in the parking lot (visible from nearly everywhere on the property). On top of this, part of the shoot was to be topless, so not only did we have to find a suitable location on the property for them, we had to be quick. Technically nudity isn't illegal on federal property, but how many tourists want to come across a topless woman in period Civil War costume? A few, maybe, but if it's not in the brochure...well, you can see our dilemma.

The shoot really went off without a hitch, and we managed to get the topless shots in on the far side of the farm house, a location only visible from the railroad tracks. About halfway through the shoot we got a period of about 20 minutes that was free of tourists, so we took advantage of it to get the shots we needed. Once the tourists started returning, we just moved to a different location and finished up with some family-friendly shots.