The lamp on the left is to make autofocus work. The flash is to the right and is controlled by a cheap radio transmitter. Both lamp and flash has a black paper attached to shield the light from the background (usually i also have paper on the side pointing to the camera to minimize flare etc in the lens)
The bird above is created from three shots that have been put together in photoshop. The two other is one shot each thats "mirrored" in photoshop.
