UPDATE 9/25: I'm updating my review at the request of TMD to make it as clear as possible. TMD has emailed execs at my company, attacked our brand on Twitter, and gone around me to try to get this review changed. I feel that my review was honest, and his way of handling this was unfortunate. My purpose in posting and keeping this review up is to help event producers like myself have good information when hiring vendors for their events.
This review represents my experience and should not be construed to represent the company I work for.
REVISED REVIEW:
Before the event, Tom communicated well, asking us in advance about our run of show, where he should be, what he should wear, etc. During the event, he was kind and hard-working.
The photos we received were not what we were hoping for. Tom provided all of his photos to us, but none were sufficiently edited to fix lighting, tone, focus, and framing.
An estimated 80% of the event photos he provided for the 13 hour event were so out of focus, under exposed, or framed oddly, that they were unusable. There were some big name speakers we were unable to get a good usable photo of.
We asked TMD to update lighting and contrast for about 3 photos for us that we needed for a media outlet, but the work we received was still not up to what we wanted, so we manually fixed those ourselves.
For the remaining 20% of the photos, I spent an estimated 20 hours of my own time editing manually in photoshop with what skills I have. I felt personally responsible for our lack of good photos having hired TMD, so I worked after hours to update their tone and sharpness as best as I could.
Tom also provided a portrait studio photographer for our event, and his subcontractor's work was the sloppiest I've ever seen. He didn't set up so that his camera's focus was on the subject while the background was blurred, so every wrinkle and crease in the backdrop he set up was visible. When he went in to edit those photos, it looks like he used Photoshop's black paintbrush and blur tools to go around the subject, missing spots, blurring or accidentally adding shadows to parts of peoples' arms, hair, etc. The quality of the photos was embarrassing for us to share with our attendees after the event. Tom did what he could to make it right and worked on some more edits, but they were still not professional-looking. Ultimately, TMD should take responsibility for the work of any subcontractors that they hire.
It was also a bit embarrassing that Tom was sharing our event photos on Twitter to promote his own brand, watermarking them, and trying to get attendees to view them before we had a chance to go over them and tell him about the issues with the focus and quality. read more