Sunset Portrait Basics

Sunset/Sunrise Portrait Basics - Over the holiday break a few friends and I went up to Lake Tahoe to go snowboarding. On the way we encountered a beautiful sunrise. What a great backdrop for a portrait shot!!! It's actually really easy to make a good sunset shot. Here are the steps...(keep in mind, this is for people with point and shoots or any camera for that matter that has a built in flash; you could get really elaborate with off camera flash if you had the time/equipment. Check out Strobist if you want to learn more about off camera flash techniques)

1st - Flash!!!
Make sure your flash is on or you're going to get silhouettes. If you're going for the silhouette look don't flash, but in every other case you need to flash if you want to expose correctly for the people and the sunset.

2nd - Focus!!!
Focus on the subject not the sunset!!! A lot of times the auto-focus in the camera will want to focus on the sunset and not your subject. This will result in the sunset being in focus but your subjects are blurry. Many cameras allow you to pick your focus point. Be sure to choose a focus point that will accurately focus on your subjects and not the background.

3rd - Compose!!!
Try to stay away from putting your subject's head in the middle of the picture; put their head on the upper or lower third of the frame. This rule also applies if you were going to take a picture of the landscape alone. Be sure to put the horizon line on a third and not directly in the middle of the frame.

4th - Exposure (Advanced)
Expose for the sunset first without the flash! Once you get the sunset exposed properly then turn on your flash and adjust it to expose your subjects properly. Most cameras will use built in auto-flash exposure for this (aka ETTL) but you could do it manually too if you had an external flash.

I hope this helps with your sunset shots. These rules can also be applied to pictures taken during the day. The basic idea is Use your Flash!