Sorry for not addressing the original sepia issue. Honestly now that I look at these, it must have looked too wrong for me to make a determination. Sepia, or any other hue conversion I think does well when that color has an implied place somewhere in the scene. Something with a fair amount of wood would do as well as a brown. A blue might work with snow if the sky seems clear but from what I've tried, it'd not worked well yet.
Pixels: The more little dots used to take a picture, the more little dots you have to play with. So, if you take a picture giving yourself plenty of room to crop out unwanted stuff, the more likely you are to still end up with a fairly good quality shot. I'm guilty of this. Sometimes I can't figure out where best to point the camera to get the maximum out of a scene so a snap something that includes what I might expect to crop out, or just snap something that has elements I feel I can play with later.
BTW on the first one, I'd include the whole clump of trees on the left. That last one does look like someone is about to get in arrears.
