Help with photographing buildings!!!

[behanana]

OK, so here is the background, I went walking around a town just down river from me to take some exterior pictures of old churches (this town has a bunch of churches, most of which are no longer used) thought they would make some interesting pictures and I like the way they look. After getting home I started looking at them and I'm very dissapointed in them.
The questions, what do you do about power lines? Edit out afterwards or just say it's part of the shot? Is my 18-55mm nikon lense wide enough? Or am I trying to just tackle really difficult shots due to thier location in a town with tight buildings around them?
Thanks to anyone that responds.

I added a couple of shots, feel free to rip them apart or edit them if you wish, I keep going back to them and pulling problems out of them which is ok because I see things I'm going to different when I go back down there.

 

[fokker]

The power lines are ugly and don't go with the nice old churches very well at all. You can edit them out but it's pretty time consuming.

Personally my take on shooting stuff like this: You will never get good looking photos trying to show the whole building in one shot with all the other ugly and distracting stuff going on around them. Instead of trying to go wide, get in close and just focus on some of the cool features of the building and show it in great detail - kind of like this: Churches in West Azarbaijan -

If you still insist on going wide, try doing it at night or evening/early morning for more interesting lighting, and make sure you keep your horizontals horizontal and your verticals vertical.

Hope that helps somewhat.

 

[behanana]

Thanks fokker, that does help. I noticed the symetry problems with #1 as soon as I put it on my comp. I'm going back to that one to reshoot it. I'll give selecting specific parts of the buildings a shot, I kinda figured removing the power lines would be a pain in the a$$.Thanks for the tips though! I'll post some of my new shots once I get them.

 

[AverageJoe]

Fokker made a good point, try shooting early in the morning or later in the afternoon when the light isn't as flat. Also, try bracketing your shots for some alternative exposures.