Not sure if the upcoming Halloween Day was the inspiration behind wanting to visit the Fonthill Castle & Mercer Museum in Doysletown, PA. But we made arrangements to visit on the Saturday before the scary, but fun holiday  for children and grownups alike.

Henry Chapman Mercer a Doylestown native was a historian, archaeologist, collector, and ceramist who left behind him a legacy of his deep passion for history and art. The Fonthill Castle is a very interesting place to visit and photograph. It was built by  Mercer who began construction  in 1908 at the age of 52.  Mercer completed the reinforced concrete building in 1912, and used it as his residence. The castle consists of forty-four rooms : 10 bathrooms, 5 bedrooms, 18 fireplaces, an Otis elevator and 21 chimneys and air vents. Mercer’s collections were varied and seemingly endless, including more than 50,000 objects that are displayed at the Mercer Museum.

I was with my hubby Anthony, Roman Kurywsack & Dr. Nick Palmieri.  It’s always fun photographing with this group. It almost always seems like a new idea comes up and we sort of deviate a bit from our original plan and end up having a great time at it.

I would of loved to have also done some Star Trails that evening since we had Roman with us and pretty much clear skies. But he was flying out west very early the next morning to run a Photo Tour and offered us a rain check. I understand Roman is almost done with his e-book on Night Photography that should be released soon.

Most of my images here are HDR photographs. I tone mapped them using either Photomatix or Nik HDR software. I used a variety of filters in PS CS5 to give them a different look and feel. The filters I used were, Tiffen, Topaz & Nik.