Ray was born in Columbus, Nebraska, and grew up in the neighboring village of Shelby, where he was educated in local public schools. Encouraged by his mother, he adopted photography as a hobby at the age of eleven and within a year was developing and printing photos that he had taken with a medium format Speed Graphic camera that he had been given. Once a week his parents drove him 90 miles east to attend meetings of the Omaha Camera Club. When he was sixteen a local newspaper published a photo he had taken showing the last passenger train that would stop in his home town.
