Hi Jeff,
Shadows make interesting subjects. But personally I like them very sleek and straightforward - trunk, branches and little else. The first image has what I assume are clumps of snow throughout and while they may look good on the tree, I personally find them distracting in the shadow. That may just be me. The shadow in the second image is much sleeker. That said, I find the lines of the houses are so strong in the second that the shadow starts to feel secondary to the houses.
We are looking at snow and a lot of it in both images. When shooting images like this you need to remember that your camera is going to want to expose the image to middle gray. And how is it going to do that in an image that is mostly all white? By taking that white to middle gray. In both images, your snow is way too gray. WHat you need to do is to overexpose the image by maybe +2/3 to +1 EV to get the snow whiter. Even then, it may also take some post-processing help to get it looking right.
The image below isn't anything great but compare the snow in it to the snow in your images. (Mine is actually close but could be a bit whiter and there is noise in the background that needs to be removed but my point about the whites should be clear).
