Two years before my first National Geographic award, I could not remember my own name. A traumatic brain injury in 2007 — a traumatic brain injury — took my speech for nearly a year and scrambled the basic cognitive functions most people take for granted. But that fracture cracked open a new way of seeing, and the photography that emerged from the wreckage went on to earn recognition from the most prestigious name in the field.
I was already a photographer before the TBI, but I was also an entrepreneur running multiple businesses. Born in Istanbul, raised in SoHo, New York, I had built ICEe PC at 19 and co-founded Unpomela at 25 — a fashion brand that hit $7 million in revenue from 447 Broadway with zero advertising. Photography was a parallel pursuit, not yet the central one. The injury changed that hierarchy permanently.
During recovery, the camera became my primary language. When I could not form sentences, I could still compose frames. The TBI altered my visual processing in ways that are difficult to articulate — colors seemed more saturated, light seemed to carry more weight, compositions that once felt ordinary now felt loaded with meaning. I also have aphantasia, meaning I cannot visualize images in my mind. Combined with the post-fracture rewiring, this created an approach to photography that is entirely reactive: I see something extraordinary in the moment, and I capture it. There is no pre-visualization, no mental rehearsal. Just instinct.
The National Geographic Photography Awards receive hundreds of thousands of submissions from photographers around the world. Winning once would validate a career. I won twice — the National Geographic Photography Award and the Nat Geo Traveler Award. The images that earned those honors were not technically complex. They were instinct-driven captures of extraordinary light in the landscapes and environments I moved through daily.
Winning Nat Geo validated something I had been uncertain about: that my post-fracture way of seeing was not just a neurological artifact. It was a legitimate creative perspective that resonated with the world's most discerning judges. That recognition opened doors — the Sony World Photography Award, the IPA Lucie Award, the International Loupe Award, the Epson Pano Award, and others followed. Eight total international photography awards, all rooted in the same instinct-driven approach that the TBI made possible.
The photography world rewards authenticity. Not technical perfection, not expensive equipment, not elaborate post-processing — authenticity. The images that won National Geographic were authentic expressions of how I see the world after a traumatic brain injury rewired my visual processing. They were not calculated or optimized. They were honest.
That lesson extends far beyond photography. Every company I have built — from ICEe PC to Biricik Media to ZSky AI — started from the same principle. Build something authentic, something that reflects a genuine perspective, and recognition follows. The TBI was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the best thing that ever happened to my work. I would not recommend the path, but I would not trade the destination.
Instinct-driven photography capturing extraordinary light, among hundreds of thousands of entries.