I tend to believe that taking a picture of a sunset is what what everyone who's ever held a camera dreams of doing. And the truth is it is something anyone can do. From the high prices DSLR to your everyday point and shoot all you need is to have the control to decide your settings. Almost any camera on the market have this option. If you own a point and shoot camera then your looking for the options that are for say things like macro (picture of a flower) or portraits (picture of a persons head) or sports (picture of a guy running) those of the most commonly found setting on almost every camera and I say almost because I don't want to say all and then have someone get mad at me that they bought a camera and it didn't have those options. If you're working with a DSLR then your going to focus on your shutter speed.

First you need to decide what is the purpose of the photo? Is it to get the sun set or is it to get the tree standing in from of the sun set. Because I am here to tell you that you can't do both in one picture. You can do both with layering but that for another day.
When taking a picture of a sunset everything else is going to be a silhouette meaning it's going to darkness to the point when you can really only see the outline of the image and not the details.

Most people think that because it's getting dark out as the sun sets that your shutter speed need to be slower to allow more light into the sensor. If you haven't read my post on shutter speed you can check it out here.
But the truth is sunset are very very bright and though you should never point your camera right at the sun you can point into the sun's direction when you do this you will noticed that you're shutter speed needs to be very high. All of this pictures were taking with this fomula.

f/8
speed 1000
ISO 100

Now it's true that my speed would not have had to been so high is I had changed the ISO or the F/stops but I want my pictures to be as smooth as possible and the only way to assure that my picture would be noise free is by using the lowest ISO I my camera would go. The best part about having a fast speed is that you can taking these pictures free hand without a tripod. I am so that there is a whole photography group out there that will disagree with me on that but hey I didn't use one and I really like these photos.

If you can control your ISO. F/stops, and Shutter Speed Manually don't fret there is still room for you in the world of sunset photography. Remember those setting we talked about ealier. The macro flower, the portrait head and the sports man running. Well those are what you are looking for. Taking a picture with one then the other and then another until you find the one that looks the way you want it most. Big Bird likes to use the Macro Flower while Little Bird likes to use the sports man running (again this fits my children so much)

The key to taking a sunset picture that you will love is knowing what you want from it. If you want the colors of the sunset but not the details of your surroundings that go for the fomula.

small apeture
fast shutter speed
Low ISO

but if you want a little bit of the details like the color of the grass and the shape of each blade then bring down you fomula a little.

wider apeture (not to wide)
slower shutter speed (not to slow)

for me I like to keep the ISO the same.

So go out have fun nd take some pictures.