In June of 2016, I was able to attend the 8th Hawgsmoke competition at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, AZ. On assignment for AirshowStuff, I went out to cover the events and aircraft participating throughout the week. I shot more video than stills to get some practice in on producing more video stories for the site.
Hawgsmoke is an offshoot of the now discontinued Gunsmoke competition the US Air Force (USAF) began in 1949 at Nellis AFB, Nevada and ran until 1995. In 2005, the A-10 community came together for the first Hawgsmoke competition at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center near Alpena, Michigan. Since then, A-10 units have been coming together every two years to grow their bond as an attack community and to earn bragging rights for their squadron.
I shot my footage with the idea of later publishing it as different segments covering arrivals, the Fallen Hawg ceremony, and the exciting firing range. All-in-all, I feel like I accomplished what I set out to do and was able to confidently edit my different clips into interesting and thorough segments.
You can read my write-up of the event here.