*Many people do point their camera directly at the sun..*

Reading a camera mag eariler today, article about beach photography, that talked about long exposures shooting towards the sun. Which seems to break every rule, but the trick was like pauljs75 said a very high ND grad filter.

Though I've found you can get in sun shots without grads if you're carefull.

Like the top two, taken the day of the ash cloud. I know plane windows are polarised, and with the UV filter on, I figured a couple of hit and hope shots without using the viewfinder shouldn't fry either the camera or me. While the top left is dire, the top right looked lovely when printed and the camera still works fine.

Or sometimes like the bottom one, you just get lucky, this one was caught when panning.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.