From the Drift Pit to the Photo Pit at SEMA Fest

I’m not much of a car person, but I hadn’t even made it through the doors of the Las Vegas Convention Center on November 6 before I started slowing down to look. There were custom cars everywhere, the kind you’d be lucky to see once on a regular drive through Vegas. I couldn’t have told you what went into building any one of them, but I could appreciate how much of someone’s life had gone into getting it there. And I still had a stage to find.

Going into SEMA Fest, I’d wondered how a concert would work in the middle of a car show. Once I found the festival grounds, it made sense. The stage sat across from a pit where drivers did donuts between sets. You could watch a band, walk two minutes to catch the cars, and make it back before the next band played. Even with that many people, I could get from the photo pit to the back of the crowd and try a different angle without much trouble.

The Alive were already playing when I got there around four. They looked young, and the first thing that caught my ear was how hard the rhythms hit. I’d gone in looking forward to bands whose music I knew, and here I was, barely through the entrance, feeling lucky I’d caught this one. They were the band I left wanting to hear more from.

311 were my favorite to photograph. Nick Hexum kept moving across the stage and coming up close to the crowd, which made those first three songs in the photo pit go by fast. He and SA Martinez took turns on vocals, and hearing those two voices trade off was half the fun. The other half was realizing how many 311 songs I already knew. “Amber” was in the set, and more than once that evening I caught myself thinking, Wait, this one is theirs too?

Jimmy Eat World had a quieter presence onstage. Jim Adkins didn’t need to move much to hold my attention. His voice carried across the festival grounds, and with songs like “The Middle” in the set, the crowd was right there with him. I had the first three songs to shoot each band, but I was happy to put the camera down and stay for the rest.

By the time The Offspring came out, you could feel how excited people were to see them. They opened with “Come Out and Play,” followed by “All I Want.” What I’ll remember most, though, is looking up at these enormous skulls onstage and seeing smoke pour out of their mouths. I’d spent the afternoon taking in cars I’d never see on a Vegas street, and somehow The Offspring still found a way to make me look up and think, Okay, that’s cool.

PHOTO CREDIT: Live photos by Paula Martinez for ZRockR Magazine – @2026 – All Rights Reserved.