I might be misreading your post, but winter sun is usually bad for camellias grown up north. Dr. William Ackerman wrote an excellent book called "Growing Camellias in Cold Climates" that describes many methods of protecting camellias from winter damage. From personal experience, heavy snow will flatten young camellias that are unprotected.

Yes, I mis-wrote that--it should have been.

On the longest days of the year, they get full sun, but otherwise they are in shade. As you move further north, the sun moves lower in the sky, so shadows are quite long, even around noon, during the winter months.

Thanks for the tip about protecting small camellias from heavy snow. I wondered a little about that, but have been lucky so far. We do have a bit of protection--we keep eastern cottontails away from our shubs with hardware cloth--which did get crushed two years ago when we had really heavy snow.