Sri Lanka, Sept. 11 -- Today, anyone with a smartphone is a photographer. Anyone who has Snapseed can make photographs look good. And even if you know nothing of Photoshop, you could still fiddle around and chisel off rough edges, so to speak. You could use any one of the many apps available to highlight, circle and pretty much do whatever you want it to do.

Takes the fun out of photography, some might say but others would say such things have made it more interesting.

I've known photographers and their stories amaze me. Their work is instructive. And sometimes they teach, without seeming to do so, as is the usual way of those who have mastered their art.

So, a week or so ago, I was playing with the mobile phone. I was thinking of fram...