Or maybe this crop.

One other thing I might point out as you do your editing with Adobe software. When I found out that the Adobe color pallet has more colors than SRGB I changed my camera to Adobe. Then I had a picture printed and it looked terrible. Colors were washed out and it just looked dull! I found out that most places that do prints don't want to pay Adobe for the license to use their color pallet... So the colors don't come out right if you used the Adobe pallet. I then switched my camera back to SRGB. You can still use the Adobe pallet, but if you want to print something you either have to make sure they have the Adobe pallet or remember to convert it to SRGB before you have it printed.

Good luck with your photo endeavors Dean! :)

I would say your first attempt at HDR looks good to me, it's not over done, it's more like what your eye would see.
Let me look again to comment on composition...
Personally I would crop the pumpkin photo (second one) to below the mailbox and take out most if not all the street. It just detracts from the main subject of the interesting collection of gourds and pumpkins on the step.
The fourth one is not a silhouette but I l like it a lot with the sun behind the tree in the center.
Keep going to places you like and just have fun shooting and see what you get. ;)
If you want to minimize wide angel distortion (like there is some of in the fourth one) keep the camera level and centered on the horizon. If you look through the lens and just move the camera up and down and look at the edges of the frame you will see what I mean.