Big A,
I actually go to a design grad program right now so i work on stuff like this all the time. I would personally go with the first one if i could choose. It also depends on how you want people to navigate through your site. If your "Before and After" photo groups are the main draw to the website, you might as well have large eye-catching links to pull in viewers BUT be careful with the size and style of your font. The 1st look is a good size for the font as well as the pictures but lacking the big links, the 2nd look has TOO BIG of images and terrible font.
i would take the 1st look and just add those "before and after" picture links to the left side toolbar. Also mess around with other fonts.
looks pretty professional so far, just a couple tweaks you could do.