Sergio Mottola Photography

We hired Sergio for our engagement photos and they turned out amazing! Quick turn around, easy and fun to work with, and overall great experience. Thank you so much Sergio! We couldn’t have asked for a better photographer!

I am a local, Seattle-​based wedding planner with Oak & Cypress Weddings, in business since 2011. In recommending a photographer to a client, I look at several aspects — the photographer is top-​notch in their artistry (scope, detail and movement), he/​she has integrity and values that are exhibited in their work, they are organized and responsive, they are genuine, warm people, and mostly, that they understand, whole-​heartedly, the importance of the photos for their client and always have this in mind.
I recommend Sergio.
I was sad to hear that he had a rough year because of circumstances out of his control. It was a learning experience — we all have them. I know that he’s reached out for support to our professional community and I’m more than happy to be there for him. His work is an invaluable asset to the weddings I plan because he captures the HEART of what we work so hard to put together.

HIRE SERGIO MOTTOLA! He was, hands down, the best part of our wedding. Our pictures were exquisite and captured our day and special moments to perfection — both engagement and wedding. Take a look for yourself on his blog. The photography and lighting is magical. You will not regret your decision to hire him as your photographer. Sergio showed up prepared and professional for our engagement shoot and drove us around to really special and cool locations. We were really open to his ideas because we loved his style of photography. He stayed in close contact with us from our engagement shoot all the way to our wedding date nearly 6 months later. Our photos were returned to us in a timely manner. We were also extremely pleased with the moments that he captured during on our wedding day. He was very professional with our guests and throughout our entire day. We recently received our photos and could not be happier with each one of them!!! Thank you, Sergio Mottola, for giving us photos that we will cherish for a lifetime!

My wedding was amazing. My wife did a spectacular job planning it, and Sergio did a spectacular job capturing it. His photos were exactly what we hoped for, and in a day full of stress, he was one of the easiest aspects of the day.
Before the event, he was very clear and open regarding scheduling. After the event, he got our photos to us quickly, and they were amazing.
Thank you, Sergio. Sincerely.

My husband and I got married last year on Labor Day weekend 2013. He’s been great until after the wedding (which many people here have also mentioned) I hired Sergio cause I really liked his work and his editorial style in photography. Unfortunately its been a year and my photos are still not here. Wow. Not even one. Not even a peep. Where are my wedding photos? We paid for his travel from Seattle to New York City. We even paid for his hotel stay. Is this how you get repaid?
We emailed him a bunch of times and called him. He didn’t return any of our calls or emails like he’s disappeared from the face of the planet.

Summary: DON’T HIRE HIM. We got married nearly five years ago, and we’re still waiting on a DVD of our photos and a refund for the album he decided he couldn’t complete. He is totally unprofessional, and he has made the post-​wedding photo process an absolute nightmare.
Long version:
We decided to hire Sergio for our wedding after we met him while he was a second shooter at my friend’s wedding. His prices seemed reasonable and we loved his style. Because we were having a traditional Indian wedding, we talked to him at length about how the ceremony may be more complicated and different than what he was used to — he assured us this would be fine. This was all five years ago.
Sergio was great to work with at the wedding. The nightmare begin afterward. He was initially quite prompt getting us a draft of the album (within a few months), but it was quite short. We wanted something bigger to capture the many ceremonies of the day. It took us about a year to get back to him (after consulting with various family members), but we eventually got back to him with a very detailed list of the photos to be included to capture all of the important moments of the ceremony and some ideas for how we could include them in the spread.
After that, he promised to get it to us by a date — that date came and went, and we never heard from him. We called, emailed, Facebook messaged and heard nothing. After nearly a year of this, we contacted the photographer who had hired him as a second shooter, and Sergio finally responded to us after that photographer intervened. He apologized and again promised to get us a draft of the album. But, yet again, that date came and went and he stopped being responsive. Finally, he emailed us and said he wouldn’t be able to do our album because it was more complicated than the style he is comfortable with and promised us a refund. This was about two years ago.
We never received a DVD from him and we are still waiting on a refund of the money he owes us for the album he failed to provide. He did give us a Dropbox photo with all of the photos he took for our wedding, but this was only after months of unreturned calls and emails and finally leaving a voicemail that my grandmother had broken her hip and uncle had a stroke and I wanted them to see our wedding photos before they died. (This was true.)
I have reiterated to him many times that I’d like an organized DVD of our photos so that we can create the album he didn’t, since we IDed photos by their number. He doesn’t seem to care. I have also reiterated that we were never that mad about his missing deadlines or even his inability to complete the album. What has been completely disrespectful and unprofessional is his almost total lack of communication. He only deems us worth responding to when we involve other professional colleagues or post comments on his facebook page that make his negligence public.
It’s really too bad that the memories of our wedding day has to be marred by our terrible experience with Sergio. I am looking forward to one day receiving our photo DVD and our money so I can put all of this behind me, but given his track record, I’m not holding my breath.
Please — learn from our experience and save yourself the misery — it is NOT worth hiring Sergio, no matter how nice the photos look.

We received our engagement photos on April 16^th, 2014. Without question, they are beautiful and captured our day and us as a couple perfectly. Sergio (by phone) owned up to his mistakes and we thank him for that. We will not be utilizing him for our wedding and he has agreed to a plan to refund our deposit (less the cost of engagement photos). Taking into account how happy we are with our photos, we have increased our rating from 1 up to 2 stars.

The engagement pictures were beautiful.

My wife and I hired Sergio to be the photographer at our wedding. He was extremely prepared, professional, and creative. He took all of the photos that we asked him to take and volunteered some additional ideas that he thought would make for fantastic memories. We were extremely pleased with the photos that we received and constantly receive compliments on them. We couldn’t be happier. Actually, we wound up hiring Sergio again to take some holiday photos. We highly recommend that you consider hiring this photographer.

I have known Sergio for a while and have always been familiar with his work. So when my husband proposed in May of 2011, we hired Sergio literally the next day. I knew my husband and I didn’t want the stereotypical ‘posed’ wedding photos — we wanted a collection of photographs that really captured the moments as they unfolded. That being said, Sergio was our obvious choice. Sergio stayed in touch with me during the planning process and was even a resource for me for everything from wedding colors to ceremony locations at our venue. We had a Skype meeting (my husband and I live in Dallas) and I would send Sergio my ideas and inspiration as details started to fall into place.
My husband and I were married a year later in May of 2012 just outside of New Orleans, LA. I knew Sergio would take fabulous pictures, what I didn’t know was how significant his ‘eye’ and input would be the days leading up to our event. The florist had a hard time understanding our concept. In addition, she didn’t order enough flowers and her solution was to ‘borrow’ flowers from the two other weddings occurring that weekend. The wedding coordinator was just going through the motions and the whole dress rehearsal was sort of an unorganized mess. Sergio really took the bull by the horns and basically redirected the ceremony rehearsal so the pictures would have a better background. He also took it upon himself to handle our florist, answering her questions and providing suggestions so I could relax a bit the night before.
About 15 minutes before our outdoor ceremony, it started to downpour. The coordinator delayed the ceremony in hopes the rain would stop. Eventually, Sergio pushed to move the entire thing indoors and then supervised the very quick set up at the rain out location.
Your wedding can be such a whirlwind of emotions and it really pays off to have vendors with experience that you can trust. I literally don’t think our wedding would have been what it was without Sergio’s presence. I leaned on him so many times throughout the weekend and he more than delivered. Not only was the whole experience that much more enjoyable — but our pictures were breathtaking.
I almost struggle to even put into words how thrilled my husband and I were with the outcome. The images are visually stunning and something we will treasure for years to come. Sergio’s photo journalistic approach caught parts of our wedding that we would have otherwise forgotten or missed. The overall attention to detail and lighting really makes his work stand out from other wedding photographers. His talent is second to none and we are constantly complimented on our wedding pictures. Needless to say, my husband and I highly recommend him to anybody looking for an exceptional wedding photographer.

Sergio Mottola did our daughters senior photos and we were so happy with his level of professionalism. He took absolutely stunning photos and was able to truly capture the beauty of our daughters special year.
Originally when we hired him we told him we only had a short turn around time and would need his help working with the year book staff for the photo chosen to be in the publication. Sergio responded quickly and got the photo for the yearbook in plenty of time before the deadline.
When we received the final photos we were blown away. So gorgeous and such a great variety and so many options. So many beautiful poses that we had a hard time narrowing them down for announcements!
We are grateful for his level of realness as well as professionalism with our daughter.

We hired Sergio Mottola after a photographer recommended him to us because that photographer had a conflict with our wedding date. We really liked Sergio’s work so decided to pick him to do our wedding photography. Our wedding was at the end of August. Everything went great until after the wedding. Initially, Sergio was just late in returning our email and calls. We were concerned, but when he eventually got back to us, we were relieved. However, after he missed his own self-​imposed deadline for a delivery by late October, we tried to get back in touch with him and he began a long habit of not responding. He responded one more time to a call my husband made to him letting him know that we were anxious to get the photographs so they could be used on a family Christmas card. He said he would deliver them the following week, but that did not happen. Weeks and weeks went by, with emails and calls put out to Sergio. I even told him that my parents were going on their first vacation ever and seeing family members for the first time in decades that they wanted to show our wedding photographs to, but that did not move Sergio at all to even respond, much less give us even the proofs from our wedding. More weeks had gone by and my husband and I both emailed and called Sergio, but our calls were avoided and our emails were not returned. We had signed a contract when we hired Sergio which was Sergio’s form. The delivery period was spelled out in the contract by Sergio himself and stated «Photographs will be delivered via online proofing 4 – 7 weeks after the wedding date.»
Nearly three months after our wedding, in mid November, Sergio sent us 46 photographs with a note letting us know that the rest would follow «soon». Thereafter, we emailed, called, texted, and Facebook messaged Sergio, but did not hear anything back from him in the span of a month and a half. And despite not emailing us or calling us back, he took the time to remove a message I posted on his Facebook wall asking him whether we would receive our photographs. We could have understood problems and issues with delays, but it was ultimately the complete and utter lack of communication that frustrated us the most.
1 star.
***Update****
We finally received our photographs on January 30, 2014. To Sergio’s absolute credit, they were strikingly beautiful and lovely. We will cherish them forever. In the week leading up to receiving our photographs, Sergio was very responsive and let us know when there were technical issues (such as being unable to upload photographs due to the slow speed connection) and set a date on which he would send us the photographs. He met that deadline and sent us the photographs as he promised. We were very happy with this change in course and welcomed the responsiveness that Sergio showed us. This being the case, we bumped up his review to 2 stars.