Critique and possible help for an Xmas card??

So I tried my hand at photographing my own x-mas card for the lady and I. I did as much as I could with the editing in lightroom and PS.. Photographing people is not my forté and Im not super pleased with how it came out. I much prefer landscapes and inanimate objects.. lol.

Any help is much appreciated. If you think you can help me out, the original is linked below, but here is what I have so far.

Brighten it up and for what it is, it's wonderful.

Its so cute! i'm giggling at the cats face! both look like 'can we get this over and done with!' and i love their little scarves

plan your composition a bit better,its unbalanced,put your wife on one side of the tree and u on the other,also frame it so the door isn't in the photo,move things around if u have to,set up your cam on a tripod and put it on burst mode and use a remote to trigger the shutter,in burst mode it will help if one of u blinked or an animal moved a bit u should get one decent shot,even try some funny poses to,u may prefer those,composition is important

I like the crop. Wish there was a little fill in the shadows & that their bodies weren't facing out of the frame.

Great tree and beautiful kitties! It would be perfect if you were arranged a little bit better and better exposed.

Thanks everyone.. The composition is what it is. We are in an apartment and its not that large in here. I had moved the couch out of the room completely, but could not move the television, and if she were sitting more to the other side of the tree, it would have been a glaring presence in the shot. The lighting in here sucks also, and I couldnt use a strobe, it would have washed out the lights on the tree too much.

I did however take this shot of our first home ornament, which I feel came out much, much better composition wise.

^^^^^ Looks good. Here's your first shot, downloaded from your link and run through Lightroom. This one is cropped 5X7.

SVThuh wrote in post #17329126
The lighting in here sucks also, and I couldnt use a strobe, it would have washed out the lights on the tree too much.

http://blog.mpix.com …os-by-the-christmas-tree/

I would suggest, if it doesn't bother , to straighten it just a tad bit. Other than that it will work

the ornament shot looks great,the bokeh makes this very appealing

SVThuh wrote in post #17329126
The lighting in here sucks also, and I couldnt use a strobe, it would have washed out the lights on the tree too much.

You can use flash and not wash out the lights. The benefits are lower ISO, smaller aperture, and critter motion stopping. Find a usable shutter speed, an aperture, and an ISO that accentuates the lights. Then add flash. Below, on-camera flash bounced behind, up, and to the left. f/4.5 @ 1/30, ISO 1600.

Agreed. The ornament picture is nice.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/psuT​WH