An interesting capture of this lighthouse & shooting directly into the sun can give some interesting effects. First off a vertical presentation works well here, but I would off center the lighthouse. The sunspots & glare is a bit too distracting & obscures the main subject. I would suggest to shoot early morning or late afternoon. The overall image does appear to be underexposed ~ you could try to lighten it up in a photo-editing program. I would love to see some of your "normal shots". Experimenting is the fun part of photography ~ so keep on shooting.

Sherree pretty much said it all. I see you have a five-bladed iris. To me, they produce the most interesting lens artifacts when utilizing flare in a photograph.

When you attempt a shot like this you might consider opening the lens a stop, then using unsharp masking to bring out highlight detail, and retain shadow detail.

Keep on keepin' on. You can't get there if you don't go for it. You are on the right track.

Look for rework of this one soon!

I agree with danika, a lot of good suggestions there for you to try. I like your idea to capture the sun thrue the lighthouse though.