Brave composition!
Whenever you’re shooting into the sun you’ll have “blown out” areas where you loose all detail in the light end of the tonal spectrum. I attached a blog link on your previous post about the digital camera’s ability to handle latitude and if you didn’t read it now is a good time to do so. This will help you understand the issue of overexposure.
http://photographyicon.com/blog/2008/11/26/digital-cameras-latitude-dynamic-range/
I really like this composition with a strong foreground and background, but I feel your sun’s position is a little centered. If you were going for symmetry you should have perfectly centered the sun, but it’s slightly off to one side and the light is spilling in an unbalanced manner which gives it a bit of an awkward balance. It would have been easier to put it off to one of the sides or up towards the corner. If you ever go for symmetry, you should be as accurate as possible, or the composition looks a little unusual. For example, look at the following composition that uses symmetry and formal balance as it’s primary photographic element:
http://www.images-photography-pictures.net/Berlin-Germany-symmetry-svenwerk.jpg
or
http://u1.ipernity.com/10/41/20/3584120.7c7ad629.560.jpg
Imagine if these compositions were off by even 6 inches? The symmetry would be lost and it would look unintentional.
The second image is much stronger because you shift your composition to a more informal balance. You’ve also used reflection to help add an interesting compositional element. The reflection of the light ensures the white highlight is seen more than once (at the top of the composition and again in the bottom of the composition). This spreads out the tones of the photograph and still allows you to keep the photograph a low key photograph make up primarily of mid tones and dark tones.
Great work. I particularly love your second photograph. Wow.