Lighthouse Keeper

Lighthouse keeper Watching Over A Stormy Sea

Lightning strikes over a stormy ocean as the keeper stands at the lighthouse rail and looks out over the raging seas. The sky is dark and filled with storm clouds in stark contrast to the shaft of light from the lighthouse beacon. This concept stock picture illustrates themes such as risk, danger and adversity and yet at the same time represents salvation, safety and guidance. It is a perfect image for catching a viewer's attention for ads, promotional materials, and editorial content that speaks of such far ranging topics as financial challenges, spiritual journeys and preparation for troubled times.

Creating Concept stock photos and images

I used Photoshop to create this stock photo composite. The man on top of the lighthouse, the keeper, was my assistant, Sam Diephuis. I photographed him in my studio in the heavy weather gear. The lighthouse is a combination of two separate lighthouses that I photographed on the Northern California coast. The storm clouds were actually shot in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The lightning was photographed in the Himalayas. The image was originally produced a poster for a wall decor company, but now is available as a stock photo. The shaft of light was created entirely in Photoshop.

Uses of concept stock photos of lighthouses.

It is interesting to me that most lighthouse shots are done on bright sunny days. A lighthouse is there for, and most dramatic in, stormy scenes, or in thick fog. They are there to warn and protect under difficult circumstances, hence their importance as concept images. Lighthouses are one of those rare iconic symbols that have visual appeal to almost everyone, and their symbolic relevance transcends languages and culture making them ideal for communicating advertising, promotional and editorial messages to a world audience. This lighthouse picture is one of a series of such images I have created to help advertising and editorial clients get their messages across with impact of a universal nature. This image can be effectively cropped as a vertical and used as a magazine cover, or can make a great double page magazine spread or billboard. The image also serves as a clean, graphic and quickly read thumbnail which makes it work very well even as a small thumbnail used on the internet. There is plenty of room for headlines and body copy too.