For me, the second image lacks any meaning or story.
The first one, on the other hand, is fabulous. These parallel pipes with a dogleg and a jump over another pipe make me wonder what they are for? why are they going this path? Who installed them so neatly. Were they considering how to make it look tidy and pretty? I'm not bothered by the distortion. What little distortion there is could very quickly be repaired by a free transform or a warp.