Photographer, Editor, Publisher, Mentor

When the young Southern Californian totaled the 1956 Austin Healey he’d been drag racing, he decided he’d remain in the sport as a photographer. A shot in Drag News in 1962 got him his first press card and the rest is history. “Diamond Jim” became for decades one of motorsports’ best and most prolific shooters, sometimes covering 100 events a year, and helped guide and shape the careers of other drag racing writers and photojournalists. For several years, he and Phil Bellomy published their own magazine, Drag Sport Illustrated. Later he worked for Petersen Publishing and went on to publish Super Stock & Drag Illustrated. He became the AHRA’s official photographer and editor of its Drag World, and track photographer at Orange County International Raceway. Dave Wallace Jr. wrote of Kelly, “He was the Ansel Adams of drag racing photography, a gentle giant of our sport and one of the best friends I ever had, on or off the track.” Kelly was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 2003.