David Doubilet has been called the Audubon of the sea, an ordinary photographer who combines an eye for the perfect shot and a little bit of technology to create extraordinary photographs of coral reefs, shipwrecks, sharks, and other inhabitants of the sea, helping us view the oceans in a new way.

He has spent over 26,000 hours in the sea creating a window into the hidden world beneath the surface. He even jokes that he has spent more time in the water during his life than on land.

The most published photographer currently working for National Geographic, Doubilet frequently works with his wife, Jennifer Hayes, an aquatic biologist and globally published photojournalist in her own right. Together they have photographed in the depths of such places as the southwest Pacific, New Zealand, and Scotland, as well as freshwater ecosystems like Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Canada’s St. Lawrence River.

Doubilet and Hayes appear January 27 at Niswonger Performing Arts Center in Van Wert to lead you on a visual journey of some of their most recent National Geographic assignments, from the tropics to the polar ice, sharing never before seen images from those adventures and providing insight from behind the scenes along the way.

Every ticket purchased for this event will be entered into a drawing to win a family zoo pass to the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo. — Chris Hupe