Side by side images problem

Question

I am having some problems using sub-floats. I am trying to put two images side by side in the same row to avoid wasting space, for which I used sub-floats. However, they touch each other that it is hard to read their captions at first. See this output:

Any idea how to solve this problem?! Moreover, those figures are not really related to each other (although they are illustrating the same problem), so I think they should be figure 2.2 and 2.3 rather than 2.2a and 2.2b, right? If yes, how can I do that?!

EDIT: Here is the code I used to produce this:

\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{cite}
\usepackage{subfig}

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \subfloat
  [
  Halper et al. \cite{HHS01} pointed out that in a configuration like this, the
  hemicube method of Philips et al. \cite{PBG92} would fail to find the position
  P to avoid occlusion while shooting the target. Image taken from \cite{HHS01}.
  ]
  {
    \label{fig:halper1}
    \includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{halper1}
  }
  \subfloat
  [
  Volumes of partial and total occlusion. Image taken from \cite{CN05}.
  ]
  {
    \label{fig:occlusion_cones}
    \includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{occlusion_cones}
  }
  \caption{}
  \label{fig:halper1}
\end{figure}

Answer 1

To increase the space between the captions of the subfloats, one way is to add margin=<length> as an option to the subfig package, e.g.

\usepackage[margin=10pt]{subfig}

But this adds the margin to both sides of the caption. The package has many options for customizing the caption in that way, see the manual.

If you do not want fig. 2.2a, 2.2b, but fig. 2.2, 2.3, you can use two minipages within the figure environment:

\begin{figure}
  \begin{minipage}{0.45\textwidth}
    \centering
    \includegraphics{a}
    \caption{Caption A}
  \end{minipage}\hfill
  \begin{minipage}{0.45\textwidth}
    \centering
    \includegraphics{b}
    \caption{Caption B}
  \end{minipage}\hfill
\end{figure}

Answer 2

put a \hfill between the images:

\begin{figure}
  \centering
  \subfloat
  [
  Halper et al. \cite{HHS01} pointed out that in a configuration like this, the
  hemicube method of Philips et al. \cite{PBG92} would fail to find the position
  P to avoid occlusion while shooting the target. Image taken from \cite{HHS01}.
  ]
  {
    \label{fig:halper1}
    \includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{halper1}
  }\hfill%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% <========
  \subfloat
  [
  Volumes of partial and total occlusion. Image taken from \cite{CN05}.
  ]
  {
    \label{fig:occlusion_cones}
    \includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{occlusion_cones}
  }
  \caption{}
  \label{fig:halper1}
\end{figure}