Hi Aaron,
>Don't know what happened to the first photo, it turned into a attachment that does not work, so reposted it.
I like your ice shots - intriguing contrast of elements
Does your Canon have a histogram or a "specular highlight" mode? This can be quite useful to detect slight overexposure "on location" and adjust the camera settings to avoid it.
The histogram is just a series of bars showing how much of the picture is made up from each brightness level ranging from "completely dark" to "extremely bright". It's easier to use than one would think at the first look - darkest brightness level still shows a substantial bar, you're underexposing, and if the brightest level shows such a substantial bar, you're overexposing. Usually the entire diagram appears to "lean" against either the left or the right limit if you have an exposure problem.
The "specular highlight" mode shows the thumbnail of the shot with the overexposed areas flashing. If you see more than a few pixels flashing, chances are that you are losing detail to overexposure.
Usually, dialing in a couple of aperture steps of manual correction while staying in automatic mode will cure overexposure. It might be worth it to give that a try ... your IMG_1434 picture might have benefitted from it as it shows a very challenging high-contrast motif where the foaming water has been overexposed a bit. For the other pictures in the same post, the effect would be more subtle, but in general you'd probably get a bit more contrast with slightly "darker" exposure settings. (Digital cameras don't have quite the dynamic range of chemical films, so they require a bit more manual attention than I was used to from the old days ...)
I hope my explanations make some sense - don't hesitate to point it out if they don't, I'll try to clarify the best I can!
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)