Steve--LOVE the sock puppet! lol! How funny! Thanks for the comps! 
I would love to put this one a base, but unfortunately "space" rules my modeling world in a big way. A base would take up too much room in the display case. Unfortunately, that's my biggest consideration right now that forces my decisions about making dioramas, vignettes, etc. !/72 vignettes are fine, because they're only the size of a standard 1/35 tank, but anything more than that and it has to be a pretty radiical or imaginative idea for me to translate into a diorama.
Gamera, Tojo, Russ, and Mike, thanks all; I sincerely appreciate the kind and sincere compliments! 
Jack, I generally bump up the contrast and sometimes tone down the highlights, as it's really hard to get good lighting on shots without getting a "white wash" of glare or a dull gray background and limpid contrast. Mostly, I load them into Microsoft Office Picture Manager and hit "auto-correct". That actually makes your pictures look like the eye perceives them in real life. In conversations with many of the "top" modelers out there, I've learned that basically everyone does this to some degree. Otherwise your photos tend to look gray and lifeless.
Wilbur, thanks for the props on the figure, I swear that every time I start one, I feel like it's my first, and that I'm clueless as to how to bring it to life. I have anxiety about doing them half the time, but there's nothing like a figure to give a human element to the model not to mention scale. I wouldn't go starting another forum--you'd have a hard time attracting enough people to a brand new place online-better to just research and read through our own forum for figures here; truly, there's some amazing work on it. Shame about those Black Dog figures--I have found that they seem, to be very highly priced, and tend to stay away from them. 
You know, if you look around, here are actually quite a lot of good figures available in plastic too. Masterbox has some amazing ones, but you have to look for them to find them. Good luck! 