One of my favorite pictures from Namibia is this silhouette of a domesticated cheetah and the lady who cares for it. It had been rescued from local farmers who would have killed it because its mother had preyed on their livestock. I set this shot up for my photo tour group a few years ago, and even though we can't see the features of the woman and the cheetah, we can still feel the bond between them. Kiki, the cheetah, had been raised indoors, living in the house as part of the family until it started stalking a family member, a four-year-old little boy. The cheetah then joined other more wild cheetahs in a huge outdoor compound of many acres of natural African bush. The settings for this shot were 1/800, f/7.1, 200 ISO, and I used a 70-200mm lens. Shooting into the sun is always tricky because the contrast is so extreme. It's impossible to use a guideline for exposure because it depends on where in the frame the sun (or hotspot) is placed, what lens is used (i.e. is the sun large or small in the frame), and how much of the composition is silhouetted. The easiest way to expose for a situation like this is to take a shot, look at the LCD monitor, and then tweak the exposure using the exposure compensation feature until it's perfect.
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