Good portrait & good sunset

I'm a little embarassed to tell you that it's taken me a number of years to figure out how to get this shot. I used to either get a nice sunset with a siloutte of the subject, or the subject was well lit and you couldn't see any color in the sunset. The trick is to first get the 'perfect sunset' picture and the just turn-on the flash to light your subject. In this case I shot ISO 100, program mode [1/60, f4.5] and dialed in -1/3 stop of exposure compensation (EC) to get a good 'sunset' picture. The meter usually wants to make the scene brighter than it is, so you you need to dial in this negative EC. It usually takes a little trial and error to get the exposure just right. Once I had a good sunset photo, all I had to do was turn-on my external flash and voila! This was shot on Canon 5D at 22mm -- this 'wide angle' perspective allows you to see a lot of the sky. In summary:

• Use a wide angle lens to include the sky in the photo (20mm - 29mm)
• Program mode should work fine.
• I used ISO 100 for this shot, if you're not getting fast enough shutter-speed, crank-up the ISO to 400.
• First use trial and error to get the perfect settings for the sunset photo (use negative exposure compensation if needed.)
• Use your flash to light the subject (use negative flash exposure compensation if needed.)'
• Don't mess around with the camera too much - or you'll miss the sunset!