If you want to try your hand at a manual exposure, set the shutter speed to about 4 seconds and the aperture to f/16. Take a test shot and see if you like the results. If the first shot came out too dark, open up the aperture to f/8. If you happen to be shooting around water, such as at the beach, the long exposure will give the water a dreamy, blurry effect as the waves lap up on shore throughout the exposure.

Another cool effect: You can find a subject that has its own lighting, and combine it with the warm, glowing light in the sky in the background by using a longer shutter speed, which allows both light sources to influence the photo. This is one of my favorite ways to use sunset lighting. Check out my shot of a ferry at Blake Island in Washington state; the artificial lighting is a nice contrast to the warm, dusky sky.

The exposure settings in this photo are very similar to what I used in the silhouette example; I used 4 seconds, but you can try as much as 8 seconds with a fairly small aperture, like f/16.You can make the sky (and overall picture) brighter by increasing the shutter speed, and make the points of artificial light brighter and larger by opening up the aperture.