Born in San Francisco and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Robert holds dual US/Canadian Citizenship. The son of an artist and avid photographer, he was surrounded by art and images his whole life and began taking advanced photography night courses while still a junior in high school. At the same time he also became the Canadian Cycling Champion and a Canada Games Cycling Gold medalist but left a promising sporting career to pursue filmmaking, first studying Fine Art at UBC and then Film and Communications at Simon Fraser University.
“Filming Yukon Tourism ad 1987” Photo: Phil Bastien
While still in college he founded OmniFilm Productions in Vancouver where he produced, directed and photographed numerous award winning international documentaries for clients including the BBC, NFB and Greenpeace as well as over 350 TV Commercials between 1980 and 1990 prior to focusing on dramatic production full time.
Since then he has demonstrated remarkable versatility as a cinematographer, moving with unusual ease between the best TV projects and theatrical films, having now photographed dozens of movies and hundreds of episodes of TV including the most famous episode of TV ever, “The Red Wedding” as well as one of the most expensive episodes of TV ever made, the “Spoils of War” in season 7 of Game of thrones. For which he received his second of 3 Emmy Nominations.
In 2007 he returned to wearing the Director/DP cap on second unit of The Golden Compass in the UK and more recently directing 2 episodes of Ray Donovan for Showtime on which he also was a producer.
His technical and artistic mastery combined with a very deep well of experience and a collaborative nature can be credited with him being described as “A director’s dream” by former colleagues and it also contributed to his many successful relationships with first time directors. He is a member of US and Canadian camera guilds as well as the DGA and DGC. with very extensive experience working overseas in The UK, Ireland, Croatia, Morocco, New Zealand, Iceland and Mexico. He was awarded membership in the CSC in 1985 and the ASC in 2002. He is based in Southern California.
Robert McLachlan, on the set of Game of Thrones (2017)