Shooting into the sun is always difficult due to the extreme dynamic range - ie from the brightest part of your picture, the sun - through to the darkest part, the shadows. Your going to lose detail due to parts being blown out (too bright), and also being lost to darkness (the ducks). I perhaps would have waited a little longer, for the sun to lose some of it's power - maybe closer to sunset, or even just after sunset, and maybe used a tripod and used bracketing so you get 3 or more separate shots of the same picture - each shot more suited to getting the most detail out of the bright parts as well as the dark parts of your picture. Afterwards, you can stitch them together using HDR software, and tweak to how you please to create a picture with more detail in the darks and less blowing out in the highlights (the sun and it's reflection) whilst still maintaining the style you are after.
Out of curiosity, what kind of camera & lens did you use, and did you use a tripod?