Ever since I picked up my first camera (a Zenit E bought for me by my parents) I have been fascinated by falling water - of the waterfall kind. Why? I am not really sure but maybe it was the frustration borne out of the fact that my eyes could only see the cascade in 'real time' and not as I wanted to see it - flowing over a rock.
It took me a little while to knit together all the ingredients I realised I needed to shoot waterfalls the way I wanted to. For sure there have been, and continue to be, photographers who see these flowing art creations and get quite exercised about them. "That's not a 'proper' photo" or "that's not natural and certainly not as I see them" etc.
Well, my take is this. The fact that a camera is capable of delivering to our settings and instructions is a great bonus - we can be creative! To me, this in no way makes the end result wrong, or manipulated, or worse yet cheating! It just means that we have a tool at our disposal that allows us to see what our eye/brain connection doesn't. Is that wrong?