It’s becoming a tradition for me to head out on New Year’s Eve to photograph the sunset. Last year and I went to Capitola. This year I stayed closer to home and went to Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge at the foot of the San Francisco Bay.

While the stroke of midnight is the official end of the year, I find that watching the last rays of the year’s sunlight disappear over the horizon is just as an important marker of the year’s end as the stroke of midnight.