Born in Wellington in 1962, he developed an interest in filmmaking while growing up in New Zealand. He entered the film industry at the age of 17, working as an electrician on Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981), before moving into the camera department. He later worked in Australia, progressing to first assistant cameraman, and moved to the United Kingdom in 1992 to pursue cinematography.
Seresin began his career as a director of photography shooting commercials and independent films. His early feature credits include The James Gang (1997), directed by Mike Barker, Best Laid Plans (1999) and Circus (2000). He subsequently worked as second-unit director of photography on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), building experience on large-scale action productions.
His major feature credits include Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) and Pain & Gain (2013), Tony Scott’s Unstoppable (2010), Allen Hughes’s Broken City (2013), and Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013). For Unstoppable, he received a Satellite Award nomination for Best Cinematography. His later films include The Mummy (2017), Doug Liman’s Chaos Walking (2021), Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Niki Caro’s The Mother (2023) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024).
Alongside feature films, Seresin has continued to shoot commercials and music videos. His commercial work includes campaigns for Puma and Nike; the Puma commercial After Hours Athlete, directed by Ringan Ledwidge, won the Film Grand Prix at the 2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.