The Homestead Resort, Homestead: Field Notes, Problem and Solution

Level ground, open sky and the highest midday sun in this guide.

These are field notes rather than a description, organised as problems and what solves them, because a resort in flat agricultural country presents a specific and repeating set of problems rather than a single character.

The setting first. Homestead sits inland and south of Miami at about twenty-five and a half degrees north, on the agricultural plain between the city and the Everglades. This is the country that grows tropical fruit on a commercial scale in the continental United States: avocado, mango, lychee, carambola, and the palm nurseries that supply the state. The ground is almost perfectly level, the soil sits on oolitic limestone, and the field pattern is rectilinear.

That produces a landscape with three properties that matter to a camera. It is open, so there is very little natural shade. It is flat, so there is no elevated viewpoint and no way to put a background above a subject. And it is geometric, because the groves are planted in rows and the rows are visible from every angle.

The latitude is the single hardest fact. At twenty-five and a half degrees north the June noon sun reaches about eighty-eight degrees — within two degrees of straight overhead, which is as close to vertical as any venue in this guide gets. Even at the December solstice it still reaches about forty-one degrees, higher than a New England midsummer evening.

The upside of the same latitude is the day length: it barely varies, running from about ten and a half hours in December to thirteen and three-quarters in June. There is no long northern evening here, which means the low light arrives at a reasonable hour every month of the year.

We have not photographed a wedding at this resort. Which spaces are included, whether the groves or surrounding land are accessible, what the covered alternatives are and what the permitted hours allow are questions for their team.

The Homestead Resort at a glance

Where	A resort in the agricultural country south of Miami, near Homestead
The problem	Flat, open, geometric ground with very little natural shade
The sun	Within two degrees of vertical at noon in June; still 41° in December
The asset	Tropical fruit groves — planted rows, and dense broadleaf canopy
Ask first	Grove access, covered alternatives, permitted hours

Four problems and what solves them

Problem one: the sun at noon. A near-vertical sun puts the eyes in shadow and the forehead in full light, and on open ground there is nothing to modify it. This is the worst midday light in this guide and it is not a matter of degree — a face in the open here at one in the afternoon in July is not a difficult exposure but an unusable one.

The solution is the groves, and it works because of what tropical fruit trees are. An avocado or a mango holds a dense evergreen canopy of large overlapping leaves, which blocks direct sun almost entirely. Under one of those at noon the light is soft, even, a stop or two down and completely workable — which means a single row of mature fruit trees converts the worst hour of the day into a usable one.

The second half of the solution is the canopy edge. A metre or two inside the edge of a grove, facing out toward the sunlit ground, is a directional soft source with the dark grove behind — free separation of three or four stops with no equipment involved.

What does not work is the palms. A palm frond is a row of stiff parallel blades and its shadow is a set of hard-edged stripes, and in nursery country there are a great many palms. They are useful as background and useless as cover, and the distinction has to be made by species rather than by whether something looks like a tree.

Problem two: the rows. A planted grove is a rectilinear grid, and a grid photographed at any angle other than along a row or square to it produces a confusing set of converging lines. Worse, the rows are visible through the frame — a subject standing between two rows has gaps receding behind them on both sides, which pulls the eye out of the picture.

The solution is to use the geometry rather than fight it. Shooting straight down a row gives a strong symmetrical corridor with the canopy closing overhead, which is the best compositional structure available on the property. Shooting square across the rows gives a repeating vertical rhythm of trunks. Anything between those two is worse than either.

Problem three: the flatness. There is no elevation, which means every wide frame has the same horizon at the same height and the background of every portrait is whatever happens to be at eye level. A set of photographs made without addressing this looks monotonous even when each individual frame is competent.

The solution is to change the camera height rather than looking for higher ground that does not exist. A low camera with grass or soil across the bottom of the frame puts the subjects against sky and removes the horizon problem entirely. A high camera — from a balcony, a terrace, a truck bed if one is offered — compresses the rows into a pattern. Working deliberately at three heights across a day produces variety that walking further never will.

Problem four: the storms. Homestead sits inland on the peninsula, inside the zone where the sea breezes from the Atlantic and the Gulf collide and force air upward. That mechanism is why this part of Florida records more lightning than almost anywhere in the United States, and why the afternoon convection here is more reliable than on either coast.

There is no solution, only a plan: a named covered alternative for any outdoor ceremony between June and September, and a schedule that puts the exposed parts of the day in the morning or the last two hours rather than in the middle of the afternoon.

Further notes from the field

On the ground itself. The soil here is thin over oolitic limestone, and the limestone shows — as pale rock at the surface, as the material of walls and edges, and as a general paleness in the ground colour. That matters because it raises the albedo: a great deal of light bounces back up off this ground, which fills under brows and chins and means a subject on open ground here is filled from below more than one standing on grass or dark earth.

The consequence is technical. A meter pointed at a scene with a lot of pale limestone in it will underexpose, sometimes by a full stop, and the correction is deliberate positive compensation checked on skin rather than on the overall histogram.

On the light at the ends of the day. A flat open landscape at low sun is the best version of itself, because a low sun rakes across level ground rather than falling onto it — which puts texture into soil, into mown ground, into the crowns of the groves, and turns the row pattern into long shadows that read as graphic lines.

At this latitude the sun descends steeply, so civil twilight runs a little over twenty minutes and that raking light is brief. The practical response is to have the sequence decided in advance: the grove corridor, the low-camera sky frame, the group on open ground with the sun behind the camera, and one silhouette. Four setups in twenty minutes is achievable only if nobody is deciding anything at the time.

On the groups. Level clean ground is the best thing a flat agricultural property offers a group photograph, and it is worth using properly. Everyone in the same light is the requirement — full open shade, full overcast, or full sun with the sun behind the camera — and the dappled option is worse here than almost anywhere because the palms are the wrong species and the fruit trees’ canopies end abruptly.

The other advantage of level ground is depth: a large group can be arranged in two or three ranks rather than a single line, because the ground behind them is as clean as the ground they stand on and the rows can be used to organise the arrangement.

On indoors. A resort in this part of the state is likely to be pale, modern and well glazed, which means light is never the problem and separation always is. A subject against a bright wall in a bright room has nothing to sit against, and the answer is to find something dark — a doorway, a shaded recess, a corridor — or to add a source a stop above ambient so that the subject has a shadow side at all.

Wide glazing used at forty-five degrees is a room-sized softbox and the single best interior light in a building of this kind. A long corridor with a window at the end is the second.

On the recurring hazard. In the warm half of the year an air-conditioned interior sits far below the outdoor dew point, so a lens carried out into the groves fogs immediately and clears in ten to twenty minutes. With a twenty-minute twilight, that is the whole window — one body stays outside.

On mosquitoes. This is agricultural land immediately adjacent to the Everglades, and in the wet season the density at dusk is serious rather than nominal. It belongs in the planning conversation for any evening outdoor event, and it is one of the strongest arguments for a dry-season date.

• Fruit-tree canopy is the midday solution; palms are not
• Shoot down a row or square across it, never between
• Change camera height rather than looking for elevation
• Pale limestone ground fools a meter by up to a stop
• Four setups planned in advance, because twilight is twenty minutes

The agricultural year

The seasonal calendar here is agricultural as much as meteorological, and it is worth reading that way because it decides what the groves look like.

The dry season, roughly November to April, is the good window. Humidity drops, the air clears, the afternoon storms stop, and the low sun of the winter months — around forty-one degrees at noon in December — models faces all day rather than flattening them. This is also when the fields are in production: winter vegetables are the region’s cool-season crop, which means the agricultural landscape is at its most active and most photogenic between December and March.

The mosquitoes are manageable in these months, which for a site on the edge of the Everglades is not a small consideration.

The wet season, roughly May to October, is hot, humid and stormy, and the groves are doing the thing they exist for. Mango and avocado carry fruit through the summer, lychee ripens in early summer, and a fruiting grove in July is a more interesting photographic environment than the same grove in February — heavier canopy, visible fruit, deeper green.

The costs are stacked. Dew points in the mid-twenties Celsius put haze into the air, which on flat open land shows as a soft distance rather than a defined one. The condensation problem is constant. The afternoon convection is reliable and there is no natural cover. And the mosquito density at dusk on land adjacent to the Everglades is severe.

The compensation is the sky. Flat open country under the towering convective cloud that builds over this part of the peninsula on almost any summer afternoon is a far stronger landscape than the same country under a clear blue sky — and a low camera that puts the subjects against that cloud is the best wide frame the property produces all year.

The half hour after a cell passes is better still: broken cloud lit from beneath, wet limestone returning it, and the grove canopies saturated in a way dry foliage never is.

Hurricane season runs June to the end of November and peaks from mid-August into mid-October. In this specific landscape a major storm has consequences that outlast it — commercial groves are vulnerable, and a stand of mature fruit trees stripped by a hurricane takes years rather than months to look complete again. That is a question for the venue after an event rather than something to predict.

Frost is the other agricultural variable and it is rare but real. A hard freeze reaching this far south happens occasionally, does visible damage to tropical foliage, and leaves the groves looking burnt for a season. Again, a question rather than a forecast.

The practical summary: December to March for the light, the air and the comfort; June to August if a fruiting grove and a convective sky are what the photographs are meant to be about, with the covered alternative settled before the date is confirmed.

More frames from The Homestead Resort

The Homestead Resort wedding photography: common questions

What is the hardest problem here?

A near-vertical noon sun — within two degrees of overhead in June — on open ground with almost no natural shade.

What solves it?

The fruit groves. Avocado and mango hold dense evergreen canopies that block direct sun almost entirely, and the canopy edge gives a free directional portrait light.

Can we use the palms for shade?

No. A palm frond throws a hard slatted shadow. Palms are background here, never cover.

How should the planted rows be used?

Shoot straight down a row for a symmetrical corridor, or square across them for a rhythm of trunks. Anything in between produces converging clutter.

How do I get variety on flat ground?

Change camera height. A low camera puts the subjects against sky; a high one compresses the rows into a pattern.

Which season is best?

December to March: clear air, a modelling sun, manageable mosquitoes and the region’s winter crops in production.

More Florida venue guides

We are writing a photographer’s guide to every venue we would happily shoot in Florida. Here are three more, plus the full index:

• ZooTampa at Lowry Park, Tampa: The One Decision That Governs Everything
• Miami Seaquarium: What It Suits and What It Does Not
• Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens, Delray Beach: One Frame and How It Is Made

All Florida →

Planning a wedding at The Homestead Resort?

Level ground and a hard sun. Tell us your date and we will use the groves properly.

Tell us about your day →  |  See recent work