The results of the avian-jiggytime have started to appear, so I went down to the park just before sunset to see what there was around. I ended up processing these on my laptop, which makes it much more difficult as you really struggle to see the contrast as it is. So some have blown highlights whilst others I think don't have enough contrast


Duck 1 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Goose 3 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Goose 4 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Grebe 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Swan 1 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Swan 2 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Swan 4 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Swan 5 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr


Swan 6 by Chris_Moody, on Flickr

2,3,4 and the last one, the whites to me look slightly blown out. I was using highlight tone priority, though after doing a bit of reading apparently it won't have done anything as I was shooting raw.

I used Adobe Camera Raw to process, and generally used some auto settings to boost contrast a bit but then pulled the brightness and blacks back, and maybe increased fill light. Also used recovery but I found this made things look dull too.

Yeah recovery has a tendency to kill the contrast in colours if you use it too much.

You could try doing several levels layer with layer masks to just adjust certain areas of the picture, might bring down the areas that you think are over exposed a bit.

i like how the first one is trying to avoid stepping on a turd