Fountain at the entrance to the California Avenue station, Palo Alto. If the water looks just bit too bluish, that’s not an artifact of the photographic process. Ten or fifteen years ago, somebody dumped a bunch of food coloring into the fountain and turned it some un-waterlike color (I dimly recall it was green). The city maintenance people duly came along a few days later, drained the colored water out, and replaced it with the normal clear stuff. And a couple days later, the fountain was colored again. So the city cleaned it out again. And this cycle went on for a couple of months, shifting through an ever changing rainbow, until finally the city gave up and drained the fountain and left it dry. At which point people complained, so they put the water back in, which soon turned colors again. And so the fountain has been colorful ever since. As far as I know, the person doing it has never been caught, and for all I know it may be that it’s now just a local tradition that’s kept up by people in the neighborhood.

Shot with the Nikon D70s and the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom at 70mm, ISO 400, f/9, shutter 1/1250 sec. Cropping, exposure, contrast, saturation, levels, and highlights adjustments in Aperture.