Eider Ducks

Not an easy duck to photo with the high contrasting black and white plumage and strong sunlight, but ive had a go, please feel free to add any comments.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …78466591@N04/11​858576675/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …78466591@N04/11​858521845/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …78466591@N04/11​858538905/

Good shots; you're right, these types of birds are tough in hard sun.

Open these in your editor of choice for PP and try decreasing contrast and pushing up your blacks a little bit and I think you'll see the eyes pop out a bit more and the blacks won't look so clipped. Do these very subtly and you should just see a tiny bit more detail come out in the dark areas and some color/texture come back in the kelp bits, too.

Thanks for the advice, its all helpful when learning.

good shots. Last one looks a bit contrasty? You did good to not blow out the whites. They are harder to recover than the blacks.

Try under exposing 1 stop, in pp, back off contrast to -10 to -15, then back of on brightness till it looks right. Those complete differences in grey scale are real hard to work with.

Thanks for all the advice, I'm still on a sharp learning curve, but getting to understand things, slowly.
Cheers.