To be honest the placement looks pretty fine. But maybe blending some ads into your content would help? Into the larger articles...
You also need to change your images so the do NOT relate to the ad content. This is an abuse of the TOS. Otherwise, it looks nice!
I would also probaly restrict ads to having to block max. At the moment you have 3 and they are all next to each other making the page look spammy even though it has some good content.
i think your ads placement is good . there is nothink to improve . it's time focus on traffic for you
I can't remove the tables. They have to be there to make it obvious that the ads and pictures are separate....you trying to get me banned?
Personally I don't buy the whole image beside link deal. I would remove images and instead make a header image placed significantly above adsense, and remove that border. Just ticks me off from some reason.
Site is looking good, as said above I think the ad placements with the pictures might be borderline TOS, Google keeps increasing their border length between pictures and ads, I believe they are getting much stricter on that subject... Always better to be safe than sorry.