Will.i.am at CES in Las Vegas

It’s not unusual to spot a celebrity at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In fact, it isn’t uncommon to see a regular year after year.

My favorite was always the late NBA legend Bill Walton, who stood above most everyone in the crowd. Dude just hit the halls like the rest of us. If someone was paying him to be there, it wasn’t apparent. My guess is he just enjoyed the hell out of the show.

Sometimes you’d see someone in a smaller setting than you’d expect. Shouldn’t Reverend Run be part of something bigger than a single booth in a hotel ballroom? I’d have thought so.

Then there are the bigger events. And in 2012 I got one of my favorite shots. The Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am. I’ll be completely honest — I had to look up who he was there with. Turns out it was Intel, which makes sense. The company was still a big deal back then both in the computer space, and it there were hopes that it’d bring something new and different to the mobile space. (Spoiler: not so much.) And it was always a fairly spectacular keynote event.

So we hit up the talk. I couldn’t tell you what else happened. All I know was that Will.i.am came out on stage in front of a giant picture of … Will.i.am. Very on brand for a time in which you couldn’t go more than a single keynote address without the pre-show music eventually bombarding you with either “Let’s get it started” (never the less unoffensive option, fortunately) or “Tonight’s gonna be a good night.” They were inescapable.

A quick trip through my Amazon history suggests this was during my Nikon D700 era, and probably shot with a 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens — not that I really knew how to use either of those things back then. But who needs skill when you have luck and a well-lit stage, right? I wasn't even shooting in RAW back then. Straight jpeg, baby.

To this day I can’t think about CES and tech keynotes without hearing those damn songs. But at least they also remind me of this shot of Will.i.am.