Taking photos of sunrises and sunsets can produce beautiful images, however you must be careful! Protect your eyes  Never take a picture directly into the sun. When photographing the sun, take every effort to protect your eyes and your camera! The very worst time of day to take photos of the sunlight is when it is at its strongest: near or at mid-day.  It’s vital when photographing the sun not to stare at it through the lens. You can damage your eyes as well as your camera. When it comes to photographing the sunshine, the most sensible route to take is to treat your camera lens and sensor in the same manner as you treat your own eyes.

 Exposure: Select a small aperture for maximizing your depth-of-field. Meter for the sky, or near the perimeter of the sun, but don’t include the sun itself. This helps prevent white, blown-out areas, which lack detail (though some blow-out may be unavoidable). This method also helps the rest of the scene from becoming underexposed.  Sensitivity: Use the lowest ISO as possible to prevent noise in an image (eg. ISO 50, 80 or 100)

 White Balance: set white balance to daylight or sunny day  Tripod: use a tripod with either a timed shutter release (use the self- timer) or a shutter release cable or remote. This will prevent blur resulting from camera shake and slow shutter speeds.  Composition: include the ground horizon or other ground and foreground elements. These will become silhouetted and stand out beautifully against a colorful sunset or sunrise. Applying the Rule of Thirds is great for this type of photography.

 Horizon line: don’t forget to keep the horizon line straight. A slanted horizon line can be very distracting and is one of the primary visual errors!  The Golden Hour: optimal shooting is between 1/2 hour before sunset to 1/2 hour after sunset. Don’t forget about “afterglow” and remember to look behind you to notice what the sky is doing there as well.  Flash: Either Turn the flash off to get all the detail in the background or Force the flash to come on in order to get the detail of the people in the foreground. This will create quite a surreal effect, it stops the person from being silhouetted. You need to meter the light for the background

 Keep Shooting: don’t just take one shot, take a bunch of them. Then edit your images submitting the best one. You’ll never know what you might capture.  Flare: watch out for lens flare (don’t shoot directly into the sun) and keep your lens surface and lens filters clean.