How To Shoot Jumping Silhouette Shots at Sunset

Yesterday, I posted some pictures from my Beach Photo Shoot.  We did those shots about an hour before sunset which offered really pretty light.  Then when the sun was really close to setting I decided to do some fun silhouette shots in front of the sunset.  For those of you who might not know how to do this, here's how.

Your camera must be set on manual exposure.  You want to expose your shot for the brightest part of the sky, which in this case was the setting sun.  To get the exposure right, I first set my camera to "aperture priority" and closed my aperture down to f/10.  I wanted to make sure that my subject in the foreground as well as the sunset would all be in focus.  Then I aimed my camera at the sun and pressed the shutter half way and saw my camera recommended 1/400 as a shutter speed to properly expose the sunset.  So I switched my camera to manual and set it at f/10, 1/400.  I wanted to keep it at this setting on manual so my camera wouldn't change the setting once my subject was in the picture.

The next step took a little trial and error.  I set my camera to continuous shot and held down the shutter when my subjects jumped.  I found it worked best to get as close to the ground as possible and angle the camera upwards.  This helped make it look like they were much further up off the ground than they were.  It also got my jeans VERY wet and sandy since we were very close to the shore!  I told them to try to wave their arms out and kick they're legs up to get as much movement as possible.  I gave them a count and held down the shutter as soon as they started to jump.  I liked the shots best when the subjects were pretty much in front of the sun instead of to the side of it.  Then we just did it over and over and over! They had fun jumping and leaping and doing various yoga poses in front of the sunset.  I ended up with lots of shots that only got the sky or part of the person, but I also ended up with some shots I loved!!