Light is harvested by natural photosynthetic systems to generate electrochemical gradients that power various reactions. Implementing nature's lessons in photosynthesis holds great promise for technological advances. With a focus on designs and concepts, recent progress in generating electrochemical gradients by light, mimicking the two general types of photosynthetic centers in nature that make use of either light-induced charge separation or photo-isomerization are summarized here. Light induced electrochemical gradients pave new ways for photoelectric conversion. While extensive research in this direction has focused on light-induced charge separation, recent work has shown that energy conversion based on photo-isomerization is very promising. Photoswitchable compounds have been found in nature, such as the retinal molecule in bacteriorhodopsin. These compounds may form an attractive molecular basis for future progress in this field.