What you'll need to create this effect is an SLR camera with a zoom lens. The bigger is the zooming rage, the better it is. I used a 18-200mm zoom lens on my Canon digital camera for these pictures. The camera shutter has to be open for 2-10 seconds. For that, set the camera ISO to a low value, say 100. The appropriate aperture will be somewhere between 8-22 in most cases. Put it on manual focus mode. Now find your subject; a house nicely decorated with Christmas lights (or just a Christmas tree with lots of lights on it). Set the camera on tripod, put it on the longest end of the zooming range, and focus it. Click the shutter, and during the long exposure, zoom the lens to the widest end of the range. (It also be zoomed from the widest end to the longest end). That's it. Done.

You can also shoot this kind of picture in handheld mode without a tripod. Of course, in that case the light streaks will come out wiggly instead of straight lines, like the picture below. You can even add deliberate shaking of the camera to create a strong surrealistic effect.

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