Day 119 – Lap of Luxury

Pictured here is the luxurious Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel overlooking the Bow River. It should probably be called a castle. Actually, when I looked at their website, they call it the “Castle in the Rockies”. Okay then, ‘Castle’ it is. We did not stay here. The rooms are a bit out of our reach. They sure look nice in the pictures on the hotel website though. The Presidential Suite (at 1500 sq. ft.) looks particularly nice. I could definitely stay there.

It really is both an amazing location nestled in the mountains and a remarkable building. Walking through the hotel, it quietly whispers opulence from the two-floor lobby, to the stairwells, the ballrooms, the spas, and out onto the wide stone terrace overlooking the outdoor pool, the golf course and the Bow River.

Room rates appear to start in the mid-400 dollar range and go up (way up) from there, so if you’re thinking about staying, you might want to start saving.

Processing notes: This is an HDR image from 3 handheld exposures. I used Photomatix (as usual) to combine the images and tone map the result. Once in Photoshop, I used Viveza to fine-tune the shadow areas that were left a bit dark from the HDR process. I used my favourite Color Efex Pro filter – tonal contrast – to selectively enhance the textures in the image. I then processed it through Silver Efex Pro to add the border and selectively mute the colours.