Andy, I took the liberty of grabbing one of the pics, just to show you what a difference photoshop or elements can make.

This is the original shot:



This is the option 1 pic. I haven't spent much time on these at all, but I have cloned out the leaves and the other distractions, adjusted the levels, cropped and centralised the picture and added a small vignette:




This is the option 2 pic. It is just a quick black & white conversion of the above picture, with a bit more contrast and a curves tweek.