Biography
Ray Etheridge was born in Los Angeles. While in the sixth grade his parents moved to a small rural town in Oregon, where they had purchased an old "General Store". Ray earned money by helping neighbors with farm chores, and at age 14 he had saved enough money to open a 16mm mini-theatre in a room above the store, complete with a projection booth and "real" theatre seats. His mother bought him his first movie camera, an 8mm from Sears, and while still in high school, Ray bought a 16mm Bolex camera. He attended the University of Oregon for a year, and later graduated from the Southern California Film Institute. Some of his early jobs in the film industry were in sales and distribution for such companies as Universal Pictures, Cinema National, and Filmtreat International.
Ray quickly learned that he would rather "create" movies then sell them, and through a twist of fate he was able to land a job cutting news film for the ABC station in Portland Oregon, KATU. He moved up through the ranks from editor to cameraman, a post that he held for the next 12-years. Ray purchased camera gear and went freelance in 1985. He followed the available work, and landed long-term assignments for television stations in Colorado, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and California, as well as a bureau in Honduras. In 1988 Ray was back in Los Angeles, working extensively with the Telemundo Network and with KWHY-TV, where he worked on dozens of programs and commercials, often as Director of Photography. During the next three years he produced five direct-to-video productions under his own Golden West Films banner; The Vernonia Incident (1989); Death In Hollywood (1990); When the Applause Died (1990); FART-The Movie (1991); and Sinatra: An Unauthorized Biography (1992). Telemundo brought Ray to Miami in 1996 to shoot "Edicion Especial", an entertainment program which took Ray to exotic locations throughout the Caribbean, central, and south America. The program aired 4-years.
Telemundo then asked Ray to help start a new show called "Esta Manana" as Chief Photographer. In recent years Ray has been freelancing, working on music videos, commercials, industrials, and TV programs. He has been a member of the International Cinematographers Guild since 1975, and the National Press Photographers Association since 1998.
