How can these shots be improved?

OK, question. Have you played with your camera settings? Nikon sRGB would be your camera's native web-color space. It sounds to me like you're taking pictures in web colors. Look thru the menus of the camera for how to change the colorspace (I shoot Canon, so I'm not much help here). But I know my camera allows me to shoot in sRGB, if I so desire.

- Joe U.

From a 1st year photographer, I would say contrast, saturation, & levels. Basically the basics!

Set your destination colourspace to Adobe RGB1998. Shoot your RAW files in Adobe RGB1998. Calibrate your monitor. When you make a TIFF or RAW into a jpg for web use convert it to sRGB IEC91966-2.1 as web won't recognise an RGB profile and image will become darker and more muted unless converted.

Thanks for all the help guys!

Here's one I took this weekend:

http://www.geocities.com/seandamien/m3_alley1.jpg

So, what do you think?

Am I improving at least?