Blown out water in waterfall shots ok?

[Geebee]

I have noticed on the net and in magazines that often the shots of waterfalls and moving water have major blown out areas in the water (referring to shots done at long exposures).
I assumed this would be bad practice? but it seems very common, and often with comments saying how good the shots are.
I realise it can be hard to get a balance, my last effort on a local creek required 2 ND8 filters and 2 full -stops to get zero blowouts at 1 second exposure.(practicing for Winter)

So the question is, are bown high lights on waterfalls etc. acceptable?

[Major_Small]

Show us an example of what you mean. I'm guessing what you think is blowout is actually just motion blur.

[Geebee]

Not motion blur but clipped areas that show no detail, the latest (in OZ) Pracical Photography has an example in it and I have been doing a lot of photo surfing on the net and a lot of the shots show the same clipping ie. pure bright white with no detail the same as blown out clouds (I take lots of those ).
I will try and find some of the others I have came across and post, the waterfall tutorial on DPS has an example.

[jollence]

I got what you mean Geebee. When shoot waterfall,I always refer to the histogram to not to have clipping on the highlight side. When submitting photos to stockphotos or image libraries, they always remind that the images that had clipping to highlight and shadow on the histogram will be rejected. The best time to shot waterfall is in the morning where light is not so harsh and possibly wont get the blown out highlight. Overcast day also a good time.

[Major_Small]

I see what you're talking about - I thought you meant the entire waterfall. It's alright to have some blown out highlights and some shadows lost to the darkness sometimes, as you can see by that photo. It's only a problem when it becomes blatantly obvious. If you don't have some bright highlights and dark shadows, the image can appear pretty flat and dull.

I'm not quite sure what jollence is talking about, as I submit to stock agencies on a regular basis, and they don't overly stress the 'no highlight' thing - they certainly don't reject based on histogram clipping, as that would disqualify all well isolated images...

As you can see by that image, a little clipping doesn't necessarily hurt the final result.

[jollence]

Originally Posted by Major_Small

I see what you're talking about - I thought you meant the entire waterfall. It's alright to have some blown out highlights and some shadows lost to the darkness sometimes, as you can see by that photo. It's only a problem when it becomes blatantly obvious. If you don't have some bright highlights and dark shadows, the image can appear pretty flat and dull.

I'm not quite sure what jollence is talking about, as I submit to stock agencies on a regular basis, and they don't overly stress the 'no highlight' thing - they certainly don't reject based on histogram clipping, as that would disqualify all well isolated images...

As you can see by that image, a little clipping doesn't necessarily hurt the final result.

I agreed with you..A little clipping may be still acceptable by stockphotos agencies, what I meant was just to the over highlight and lost data.