Water - splash or smooth?

Water is a magnet when you have a camera in your hands - or I should say "it is a magnet for me!" I am not the greatest fan of water that has been photographed in such a way that it looks like something other than water. I have seen crashing seas taken with a slow shutter speed that has successfully taken the anger out of the water and rendered it into a solid seething mass of slime. To me that is unthinkable! The sea has so many moods but it is never "slimy"!
In spite of my dislike of that "look" I still cannot resist the challenge of slowing down the shutter speed and adjusting the aperture when I see fast flowing water. Just last week I took this shot.

f/ 36    0.3 sec  ISO 200     55mm  (17-55mm lens)

The water was in a little park and I had to lean over a fence to be able to take the shot. To my mind this is a shot that gives force to the water, the shutter speed has not been slow enough to smooth the water completely, there is enough splash left to give character to the water - so that it still looks like water! In the background the water running over stones has been smoothed to look more like material but that is due to the depth of field. The softer focus combined with the slow shutter has removed any splash.
By contrast I took a photograph of a pelican racing into the sea with its trophy on a fast shutter speed because I wanted the bird to be in focus and the agitated water to show the urgency of the dash.

f/ 6.3   1/320sec  ISO 200     55mm  (17-55mm lens)

Photography is all about decisions! Deciding on what is the subject, deciding on how to capture that subject to show a particular emotion or feature, deciding on whether to use shutter priority or aperture priority and so on and so on! Everyone wants something different from their images so although I may criticise what someone else has done with a photograph (I try not to!) it is more than likely that that "someone else" captured exactly what they set out to capture! I can only tell you the reasons I have taken a photo in a particular way.
AJ