the second one in particular. Very effective. Good work!

Edit: Ach, I meant the third one. The ripples. But the second is just fine too!

How about setting up a page on www.flickr.com (free hosting for up to 200 pictures) to share them?

I think digital cameras are wonderful things, be they the little ones stuck in our 'phones or the Carlos Fandango Satsuma Castanet Turbo Nutter Bastard Large Format Hasselblad job a patient of mine showed me the other day. (Camera and lens: £600 on eBay. Clip-on digital bit: £8,000..)

You'll have loads of fun, Mr D.

Millenium Bridge?

I've taken an awful lot of pics with my various digital cameras - only one at a time because the cameras do wear out which is a bit of a surprise - being able to take lots of pics and then fettle things later on your personal computer of choice is amazingly liberating. Crack on you have a lot of fun awaiting you - the great thing is that it you do have a good eye (you do) you can repeatedly get images you only got by fluke in the developed film days, though I do really believe the images from my old SLR had much more light and colour in them

about photography is what I like, and those - my friend - I like very, very much. Good work!

If you want to move up a step from what comes with Windows, but don't want to spend lots of money, or indeed any, you could do a lot worse than PhotoFiltre whioch is free.

http://photofiltre.en.softonic.com/

I've used it for ages, and it is is fine for basics like re-sizing, cropping, adjusting contract/brightness, and so on. In fact although I do have Photoshop Elements I still find myself using PhotoFiltre for the basics quite often. There is no doubt that Photoshop Elements or even the full Photoshop can do more in the right hands, but they are very scary for a newcomer.

Gimp (also open source freeware) gets lots of positive comments, though I have never used it myself.

You could set up an account on http://www.blipfoto.com/
It's a photo blog, where you post a maximum one picture per day, maybe write a bit about it and take a look at other peoples' work while they do the same with yours. Along with here, I'd say it's the friendliest place on the web.

Always a welcome sight to see another creative persons view of life. Get them up on Twitter my friend and I'll re-tweet them to the gazillions of arty types who are fool enough to follow yours truly.

- but I'd reiterate. There are some good local groups on there such as Angels of the North - http://www.flickr.com/groups/angels_of_the_north/ - which are friendly, constructive and organise regular meetups, if that's your kind of thing.

As for software, I stick with picasa: good enough for cropping, colour balance, sharpening, levelling the horizon when necessary.

Nice bokeh in #4 btw

as mentioned above is a good idea.
Flickr is for the most part a very friendly helpful place in my experience, free of the trolls that say youtube suffers from. You can post your pics in various groups ranging from locality, subject, technique etc and you may well get feedback from other users. The other thing about this feedback is that you can trace it back to the user and have look at their pics which is fun in itself but also you can evaluate their praise and see if they like the same style of photography as you do.
Also on flickr you get praise from unknown users who aren't being nice like family members or friends may be and in many ways this means more. You oddly rarely get negative comments.
You can also on flickr find people who's style you like get inspiration from their shots, most people are helpful if you ask how they did something and some users allow the picture data to be visible so you can see the camera they used "film" speed etc.
I've found the best way for me to learn is take loads of pictures and really think about why I like one and not an other.

for both Flickr and Photoshop Elements.

I've been on Flickr for a couple of years and met some fantastic, talented people through it. (Sadly this hasn't rubbed off on my own photography, which is still mediocre at best)

Photoshop Elements is just brilliant for tweakifying your pics.

BTW You clearly have a good eye for a shot. Like your stuff muchly.

Except to take loads more photos.
Go, man! Go!