metering - Where is it best to meter for sunrise and sunsets?

I can never get nice silhouettes and appropriate exposures for sunrise and sunset. How should I meter for this?

Answer

Its near impossible to balance the foreground and the horizon/ambient when shooting into the sun without lighting modifiers, so you have to pick a target.

If your target is to expose the sunset correctly, then expose for the sky - a non-white, non sun patch close to your composition, and recompose using those settings.

If your target is to expose the foreground correctly, well, thats easy, expose the foreground as normal :)

If your target is to create a silhouette in the foreground, then you might try exposing for the sky, taking a test shot, and using your view/histogram controls to ensure you have a large chunk of black in the photo (tall peak on the left side). Alternatively, you could set your exposure points to center point, expose on the foreground silhouette, then close down the shutter until your light meter is buried, -2 or better.