Help with wood placement

the placement looks fine to me. You can attach some java moss on it and let it grow.

I think it just seems so small. Maybe try and incorporate the other piece in with some rocks or like cowmilk said, add some java moss or plants around it.

You'll have difficulties with the manzanita no matter how you arrange it because the branches are too thin compared to the size of the gravel granules. It's a losing battle for the twigs unless you replace it with wood that is much larger.

you could get a few slightly bigger rocks, make a kind of pile of them in a corner and have the branch inserted into them and sticking out? making it raised might look better as the plants in the back are overshadowing it

And I'm still waiting on more plants

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The other piece looks a lot better.
Try placing it in the tank in a couple of orientations and see what fits.

The first piece might be used as an addition to the main piece, but lets see the big piece in there by itself, first.

Ditto: The gravel is too large for the tank, as well as too large for the small wood.

The tank is actually my brothers, I'm just trying to help him out. I'll try to convince him on a smaller substrate

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You can replace the front with sand and keep the large granules in the back. This way, it looks like rocks along a shoreline. Just plant the background heavily. Right now, it's very sparsely planted.

Yep as everyone has pointed out the scale of the tank is thrown off by the larger granule size. When working with smaller tanks you have to take into account the scale of everything more. Its easier with darker substrate as it would blend together more but the ones you have are all different colors so its really noticable how large they are. You can do what solcielo said and use sand as that would give it a much better look and is easy to do!