Hi all.

So I have been pretty quiet about this whole thing. 

A little over a year ago I started a company. I named it & Finch. I told my friends, my close collaborators. I told my wife Fran, obviously, since she lived all my sleepless nights and constant pacing while I figured it out. Plus, if you know Fran, you know she’s a lot smarter than me and I needed her guidance. 

But I’ve never really said it out loud, publicly, in my own words, on social media, etc. 

So here it is. & Finch is a documentary and creative storytelling studio in Portland, Oregon. We make films about people and the things they care about. And I use the “we” because that’s the whole point of this company. It’s me…but it’s also a team of truly amazing collaborators that I have been working with for years. It’s also the clients, the people who want their story told. Organizations trying to do something that matters. We help them tell the truth about their work in a way that makes other people feel it.

The blank space before the name is not a typo. Your name goes there. I am helping you. I am in service to you and your story. The work is an honest collaboration or it isn't worth doing.

I spent almost thirty years learning how to do this. Newsrooms first. Out in the community, meeting people, making photographs, then managing others doing the same thing. Then a decade running creative at a production company. And a few years at Floret, a flower farm in Washington, making hundreds of films about people growing something beautiful out of the ground and out of life. Every one of those chapters taught me the same lesson from a different angle. The story is the people. Slow down. Listen. Celebrate. We are all in this thing together. 

This journal is where I'll show the work. Recent projects. Case studies about how films actually get made, including the parts that don't go smoothly. Occasionally a conversation with someone in this field whose work I admire. I don't have it all mapped out. I'd rather just start.

Would love to say hello! 

rob@andfinch.com