Well, WAS the season to go crazy with both family and work - entirely forgot to post this as a follow-up!

Okay, blowing out the occaisonal highlight isn't a bad thing - it can actually make your image "pop" if you have dark areas and blacks in limited quantity as well. For the ebay stuff, I wouldn't go this contrasty.

The thought process behind this form of product photography - for it to really pop is what the client wants! Basically, use lights around your subject (slightly behind, if not DIRECTLY behind) to give rim lighting, or little specs here and there where it just plain blows out. Note on the metal on the main part of the watches there are even parts that are blown out - there are also blacks to balance this out.

If you have no blacks, your image will look washed out. If there are too MANY black areas, it will look dark and muddy with the occaisonal blowout, and you won't have good definition of shape or characteristics.
There are plenty of catalogs where they don't want you to blow anything out, or crush anything to black - check out nice catalogs from the likes of Sundance and Tiffany's. This works for them, but not for the clients of the images attached.

Yes, what I'm getting at is that this is not for everyone, but don't be afraid to do it if the client is looking for something with a bit more "umpf!"

Hope this helps-
-Lew ;-)