Equipment

As mentioned before, I'm using a Canon 40D to shoot with. This is an upgrade to what I usually shoot with (Canon 300D).

I have two lenses, the standard 18-55mm lens and a 50mm lens. The majority of the time I have been shooting with the standard 18-55mm lens, as it has the zoom option which works well with the nature of my close-up images. As the 50mm lens doesn't have a zoom option, it's harder to follow my active nephew around to get the right shots - and it also means I have to be REALLY in his face and intrusive. Although the 50mm lens does create amazing depth of fields, overall the standard 18-55mm lens won.

The speedlite used is also shown, it also had a remote to use so that the flash worked separately to the camera, but I decided to not use it. The screen on the speedlite is where the power is adjustable, and at the top of the speedlite (where the flash is which isn't visible in the photo), is the diffusion card. It slots out to diffuse the flash light, which ultimately makes the flash softer.