To create fun photos like these, you will need a camera that is able to hold its shutter open. On my Cannon AE1, the setting is called B or Bulb. As long as my finger is holding the shutter button down, the picture is being taken.

It's a good idea to use a tripod for this. I forgot mine on this trip, but because we were shooting movement anyway, I didn't worry about it.

I usually use 30 seconds to 2 minutes per photo. Then, I give the kids one or more glow sticks to wave.

These photos were taken on a camping trip. It was the first time I did light painting with the kids, so they didn't really know what was going to happen.

We started taking pictures at dusk, before it was totally dark out. You can still make out the trees in the background. The long exposure time causes the background colours to intensify.

I told the kids to start a movement, and then continue it for the duration of the exposure. These fine lines are from bracelet-sized glow sticks.

After getting the photos back from the lab, we decided that we should all wear black the next time we were light painting.

Here, I told the kids to go crazy and do whatever motions they wanted. The bold red light is from a toy Light Saber swinging on a string.

They really enjoyed waving their glow sticks around in the dark. It wasn't until we got home and I had the pictures developed that they realized what was happening. Then they wanted to do it again.

The second time I did light painting with the kids was about 3 months later, in early autumn. We wore dark colours, and turned out all the lights in the backyard. We carried flashlights to find our way, then turned them all off for the photos.

I bought a package of 50 glow bracelets on EBay just for this project. We had about 20 of them glowing this night in 5 different colours.

We started out just running around randomly with the glow sticks.

For this shot, the tripod was set up facing the apple tree. The kids then stayed behind the tree with their glow sticks.

I tried to get them to draw around the tree, but they didn't understand what I wanted them to do. So, they ran around waving their sticks instead.

If they had drawn instead of waving, the result would have been lines around an object instead of a silhouette.

The top of my head blends into the night because my son could not reach high enough to draw it in.

You can see all 5 colours in this photo. The blue and purple sticks are on the left, and yellow, red and green on the right.

If this exposure had been 30 seconds instead of 60 seconds, there would be less white and the colours would be brighter.