National Geographic humpback whale photographer Flip Nicklin will present a lecture at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 27, at the Egan Lecture Hall on the University of Alaska Southeast campus titled "Face to Face with the Whales."

Nicklin will show videos and discuss his career as a whale photographer. He has written 20 National Geographic feature stories and published ten books, three of them with National Geographic. His latest book was written with preeminent humpback whale researcher Dr. Jim Darling.

Nicklin's photos of blue whales were featured in the March '09 issue of National Geographic.

The lecture is sponsored by The Whale Project, a community group that has commissioned Skip Wallen to create a humpback whale sculpture and fountain for Juneau's waterfront.

Wallen, who moved to Alaska in 1964, is the sculptor of two bronzes in Juneau - the "Windfall Fisherman" by the courthouse; and the "Gang of Four" by the DIPAC Hatchery. He also recently completed XXX in Fairbanks, the largest sculpture in the state.

Wallen created " A Gift of Sight," a sculpture for the River Blindness Foundation as part of an effort to wipe out river blindness, a parasitic disease that affects 17.7 million people worldwide, most of them in Africa. That sculpture, depicting a boy leading a blind man, stands in Geneva and is used as a symbol of the fight against the disease by The Carter Center.

"It's an icon of (the Carter Center's) whole worldwide movement," said Kathy Kolkhorst Ruddy, chair of the Whale Project. "When (local artists) have a worldwide impact it's worth noting."

Suggested donation for the lecture is $10.