Don't blow out your highlights! These days you hear this admonition all the time. I suspect it's the result of the little blinky warnings all of our cameras now have. Personally, I can't stand the damned things. Blink! Blink! Blink! I'd rather destroy a photo due to overexposure than to ruin it from being distracted by flashing displays. I turn the blinkies off and generally use the histogram to keep track of highlights. However, I digress—that's not the point of this post.

Blown-out highlights. Nothing is uglier in digital photography. Capturing wide, dynamic ranges in original scenes has always been a challenge. Working with Kodachrome, for example, was never a picnic when it came to proper exposure. But, at least Kodachrome (and its brethren) would fade to white in a somewhat elegant way. If you overexposed the film it might look washed-out, pale, and faded. At its best, it might even be labeled as a high-key shot and be praised for it. With analog overexposure, the overexposed areas might be lacking in detail but there would be no gaping, abrupt and white holes in your images. Sadly, with digital photography, ugly gaps are exactly what we find when we lose control of our highlights.