The west strand by the river mouth

Cross the bridge and turn down to the western car park, and you get the same beach with a fraction of the people. The blocks here tend to be smaller and more scattered, the sand runs wide and open, and you can walk west along the tideline until the nearest person is out of frame entirely. For portraits that matters more than block size: what you want is room to work and a clean background, and this side has both.

Use the width. A long lens down the beach turns scattered ice into a receding pattern with the couple walking through it; a wide lens low on wet sand catches the sky mirrored around a single clear block. The river mouth itself is worth a frame — ice rushing out of the channel toward the surf, seals sometimes working the current — but shoot it from well back on the bank, because the flow there is fast and the edge is undercut.

Light is the same as on the east side: sunrise for internal glow, late afternoon in winter for long low colour, and grey skies for saturated blue. In June the sun barely sets and the beach is essentially empty at midnight, which is the single best combination of light and solitude the location offers all year.

The hazards do not change with the side of the river. Sneaker waves reach far up this beach without warning, the surf shifts stranded ice, and the backwash is strong. Stay upslope of large blocks, off all ice, and away from the fast water at the channel; check the swell forecast beforehand, and treat the wet sand as the sea's ground. Parking is in the marked areas either side of the bridge — never on the Route 1 verge, which is dangerous and increasingly enforced.