The Pines at Porter, Indiana: The Problem and Four Ways Out of It

A north-facing lakeshore, which is why both ends of the day are over water.

The Indiana dune country presents a set of problems that are specific to this shoreline and worth understanding before working in it.

The first is the sand. The dunes here are built of very pale quartz sand, which has a high albedo — it returns a great deal of the light striking it. That is a gift in one direction and a problem in another: it fills faces from below, which is precisely where a high sun leaves them dark, and it makes a meter underexpose by a full stop or more in any frame containing much of it.

The second is the sun’s angle. Porter sits at about forty-one and two-thirds degrees north, which gives a June noon sun of around seventy-two degrees. That is high enough to put eyes in shadow and foreheads in light, and open dune or open field has no cover.

The third is a peculiarity of this shore that has to be stated because it reverses ordinary lakeshore expectations. Lake Michigan’s southern shore faces north. That means the sun rises to the north-east and sets to the north-west in summer — and from a north-facing shore, both of those are over the water.

There is nowhere else in this guide where sunrise and sunset are both over water from the same beach. At the June solstice at this latitude the sun rises well north of east and sets well north of west, which puts both ends of a long day out over the lake. The consequence is that the classic backlit-over-water frame is available twice, and that the shore never gets frontal low light at all.

The fourth problem is the dune vegetation, which changes by species over a distance of tens of metres and produces completely different light at each stage. This shoreline is where the study of ecological succession began, and the sequence is still legible: marram grass on the foredune, cottonwood behind it, then black oak and jack pine on the stabilised dunes, then oak savanna and woodland inland.

Each of those provides different cover and different background, and knowing which one you are standing in is the practical difference between a usable position and a wasted one.

Four problems, four solutions, and each produces a different photograph. Days here run from about nine hours five to fifteen hours fifteen, and civil twilight is around thirty-one minutes.

We have not photographed a wedding at this venue. Which spaces and grounds are included, what access there is to the dunes and the shore, what covered alternatives exist and what the permitted hours are, are questions for their team.

The Pines at Porter at a glance

Where	Dune country on Lake Michigan’s south shore at Porter, Indiana
The reversal	A north-facing shore: both sunrise and sunset are over water in summer
The sand	Very pale quartz — fills from below, and fools a meter by a stop
The succession	Marram, cottonwood, black oak and jack pine, then woodland — each different
Ask first	Included grounds, dune and shore access, covered alternatives, hours

The first two ways out

The first way out is to use the sand rather than fight it, and it means changing two habits.

Habit one is metering. A frame containing bright quartz sand and a bright sky reads far brighter than it is, and a camera left to itself underexposes by a stop or more. The correction is deliberate positive compensation, checked on skin rather than on the overall histogram — and it has to be re-checked when the amount of sand in the frame changes, which on a dune is every few steps.

Habit two is where to stand. The fill from below is real and substantial: a face on open sand at noon is lit from above and from beneath, which is not modelled but is at least complete, and it is considerably better than the same face on grass. That means dune portraits survive hours that would be unusable inland, and the honest position is that they are workable rather than good at midday.

The productive version is to combine the fill with directional light. In the first or last hours, low sun across the sand plus bounce up from it gives a face lit from one side and filled from underneath, which is the best natural light on this shoreline and it needs nothing added.

The second way out is the succession, taken by species.

Marram grass on the foredune is a foreground rather than cover: knee-high, fine, and it moves in any wind, which makes it useful for texture at the bottom of a frame and useless for shade. A low camera with marram across the foreground and the subjects behind it is one of the best frames on this shore, because the grass gives scale and motion.

Cottonwood is the pioneer tree on advancing dunes and it is the one to know. It grows fast, it tolerates burial by sand, and it has large, glossy, triangular leaves on flexible stalks — which means a cottonwood canopy moves constantly and its leaves flash as they turn. Photographically that produces a shifting dapple, which is the least useful kind of shade, and a strongly green cast. Cottonwood is background, not cover.

Black oak and jack pine on the stabilised dunes are the useful pair. Jack pine is dense and dark, which makes its edge good separation — a subject a metre inside it has soft directional light in front and three stops of dark behind. Black oak in a savanna structure is widely spaced with a broken canopy, which gives dapple in direct sun and soft even light under overcast, so it is an overcast-only position.

The inland woodland is the reliable midday answer: a closed canopy of oak, maple and hickory giving soft light two to four stops down, with a green cast fixed by standing two metres inside the edge and facing out rather than going deeper.

That order — marram for foreground, cottonwood for background, jack pine for separation, closed woodland for midday — is the practical map of this landscape, and it takes five minutes to establish on arrival.

The second two, and the lake

The third way out is the lake, and the north-facing orientation is what makes it unusual.

Because both ends of a summer day are over the water here, the backlit lakeshore frame is available twice — once at sunrise and once at sunset — and the standard backlight problem applies to both. A subject in front of a low sun over water is in front of a background several stops brighter, and there are three answers.

Add a close source, warm-gelled to match the low sun, at about a stop over the ambient on the faces, and expose for the sky and the water. That keeps the lake’s colour and the faces correct, and it is the frame most people want.

Expose for the sky alone and silhouette, which works well here because Lake Michigan’s horizon is unbroken — a genuinely flat water horizon at this scale is a clean graphic base, and the requirements are a gap of light between the heads and clean separation of limbs.

Or turn around, which on this shore means facing inland at the dunes — and this is the specific consequence of a north-facing beach worth planning for. The shore never receives frontal low light, because the sun is always over the water when it is low. Turning around gives a low sun behind the camera lighting the dunes and the vegetation frontally, which is warm, directional and easy, with the dune landscape as the background rather than the lake.

That is the frame that cannot fail, and on this shoreline it is the one that shows the place rather than the water.

The water colour is worth a note because it is unexpected. Lake Michigan over pale quartz sand in the shallows reads a genuine turquoise — clearer and more saturated than most people expect of a freshwater lake, because the bottom is bright and the water is clear. That colour is strongest in the middle of the day when the sun penetrates, which means anyone who wants it has to take it at an hour when the light on people is difficult. A conscious trade.

Calm water is a mirror and on a lake this size that belongs to the early morning, before the day’s heating sets up a lake breeze. The reflection rule applies: a reflection is about a stop darker than what it reflects, so compose so the reflection is of something dark rather than of the open sky.

The fourth way out is the season, and on a Great Lakes shore it does more than at most venues because the lake drives the weather.

In autumn and early winter the lake is warmer than the air, which produces lake-effect cloud and snow bands over the southern shore — and this stretch is in the snowbelt. That means grey skies and, in the right conditions, heavy localised snow, which turns a dune landscape into something remarkable: white sand under white snow with near-black jack pine on it.

In spring the reverse holds. The lake is colder than the air, which suppresses convection, holds the shore cooler than inland, and produces fog when warm humid air moves over cold water. Lakeshore fog in May and June is common here and it is a very large diffuser: it removes every shadow, compresses the whole scene, and erases the horizon — which turns any lakeward frame into a subject against nothing.

Used once, deliberately, that is a beautiful photograph. Used five times it is a set with no background in it.

• Compensate a stop for the sand, and re-check whenever the framing changes
• Marram foreground, cottonwood background, jack pine separation, woodland at midday
• Both ends of a summer day are over the water — the backlit frame twice
• Turn inland for the only frontal low light this shore gets
• Lakeshore fog is common in May and June — use it once

The south shore year

Four real seasons, and a lake that makes each of them behave unlike the same season inland.

Winter is the most distinctive and the most demanding. Lake-effect cloud is persistent and this shore is in the snowbelt, so grey skies are the normal condition and snowfall can be heavy and localised. What that produces photographically is either flat overcast — which is soft, forgiving light with no direction, excellent for faces and useless for landscape — or, on the clear days that follow a cold front, the best light of the year.

A snow-covered dune landscape in low winter sun is one of the more unusual things in this guide: pale sand under white snow, with near-black jack pine and dark oak trunks on it, and a lake that is steel grey to ice-covered at the margins. Snow lifts every shadow to within a stop and fools a meter by about two, so open up deliberately.

The December noon sun at around twenty-five and a half degrees means the whole short day rakes rather than floods, which puts the good light in the middle of the afternoon. At nine hours five the day is short.

Ice on Lake Michigan’s southern shore is worth mentioning because it is a genuine photographic subject: wave action and freeze-thaw build shelf ice and stacked plates along the shoreline in a hard winter, and the forms are unlike anything a lake or a sea produces elsewhere. Access onto it is a safety question rather than a photographic one and the answer is no.

Spring is late on this shore because the cold lake holds the air temperature down, which means leaf-out here runs a week or two behind inland Indiana. April is bare and grey; May brings the new foliage, the pale transmissive green that backlights so well for about three weeks, and the fog season.

Redbud and flowering dogwood come in late April and early May in the wooded areas inland of the dunes, lit directly before the canopy closes.

Summer is the season and the days are long — over fifteen hours at the solstice, with around thirty-one minutes of civil twilight, which gives a generous unhurried evening. The lake moderates the heat, the turquoise shallows are at their strongest, and both ends of the day are over water.

The costs are the middle of the day at seventy-two degrees of sun elevation, haze from summer humidity, and crowds — this shoreline is a heavily used recreational area, which means a frame that reads as an empty beach usually has to be composed to exclude what is beside it: a longer lens, a lower camera with sand across the bottom, or a tighter crop.

Autumn is the best season here. Northern Indiana turns in the first half of October — ahead of the southern hills — and the dune country’s palette is specific: black oak russet, cottonwood clear yellow, sassafras orange-scarlet, and maple orange in the inland woods, all of it against the pale sand and the dark jack pine.

Cottonwood in particular is worth timing. Its leaves go a clean bright yellow and, because they are large and glossy on flexible stalks, a cottonwood in low autumn light is a mass of moving gold — which is the most distinctive autumn frame on this shoreline.

October also brings the clearest air of the year, the crowds thin, and the lake is still warm enough to be calm on a settled morning. By November the lake-effect cloud has arrived and the shore has gone grey for the winter.

More frames from The Pines at Porter

The Pines at Porter wedding photography: common questions

Why are both sunrise and sunset over the water?

Lake Michigan’s southern shore faces north, and at this latitude the midsummer sun rises well north of east and sets well north of west — both out over the lake.

What does that mean practically?

The backlit-over-water frame is available twice a day, and the shore never gets frontal low light. For that, you turn inland at the dunes.

Why is my exposure wrong?

Pale quartz sand has a high albedo, so a frame containing much of it underexposes by a stop or more. Compensate deliberately and re-check as the framing changes.

Which dune plants give usable shade?

Jack pine, which is dense and dark. Cottonwood gives shifting dapple and a green cast — background only. The closed inland woodland is the midday answer.

Is fog common?

Yes, in May and June, when warm humid air moves over a still-cold lake. It removes every shadow and erases the horizon — use it once, deliberately.

When is the shore at its best?

The first half of October: cottonwood turning bright moving gold, black oak russet, the clearest air of the year, and thinner crowds.

More Indiana venue guides

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

• Potawatomi Inn, Angola: How the Light Moves on a Kettle Lake
• The Riverbend Barn, LaPorte: A Walk Through the Site
• Sand Creek Country Club, Chesterton: Field Notes, Problem and Solution

All Indiana →

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