Rob, while I like the dark background, especially for ivory pieces, it seems almost no publications use it, instead opting for the lighter or white background as Gleeson uses. Our new INS journal publisher likes to put a bit of "shadow", actually more of a "ground" under pieces placed there artificially I think to give the photo depth. Most distracting for me is the use of materials to try to match the theme of the netsuke (such as a frog posed beside some water in some foliage). Not done very often but there is a whole book with pieces posed that way. I don't own it for that reason. There was a workshop presented by Giles Lorin at the Miami INS convention which was dedicated to photographing netsuke. Very interesting and I wish you guys could have been there to see his technique.