At this year’s food festival, local photographer Yasmina Boustani sat down with BBC Good Food Middle East to discuss the best way to photograph street food with nothing more than your mobile phone. Here’s her top tips and apps to capture the best food shots this month, guaranteed to get people’s stomachs rumbling.

Tip 1: It’s all about the light source

• Stick to natural daylight to capture the best food shots where possible. You’ll automatically find that you’ll get a nice colour balance and shadows when you’re outdoors. If you’re indoors, try to shoot next to a window or terrace. Use a ‘reflector’ which could be anything from a white piece of paper to a small mirror to add some shadow effects.

• My go-to app is VSCO. It allows you to pre-set your favourite filters and tweak your photos to give it that extra little flavour

Tip 2: Get the right colour schemes

• To get the right look and feel of your dish, you need to consider the colour scheme of the food, cutlery, and background elements. If you’re the one cooking, try using fresh ingredients so the colours on the plate, pop.

Tip 3: Get the dramatic look

• An amazing feature to use for close-ups on your iPhone is Portrait mode (available on iPhone 7 Plus and later). Experiment with it to isolate your dish and create a depth of field.

• To help you enhance the depth, my favourite app is Infltr which builds on Portrait mode’s filter option.

Tip 4: Spark your creativity

• Why not get inspiration from what other foodies are doing? Instagram for example is a perfect visual platform that can fuel your imagination and spark creativity.

Tip 5: Tell a tale

• A picture is worth a thousand words. What’s the message you are trying to portray with your photo? A teacup and a healthy snack with a book will give a cosy and relaxed image. Think about all the elements you are including in that photo and think about whether they all come together to tell your story.

Details: all photos featured are taken on an iPhone X. For more information, visit Apple Middle East. If you enjoyed this article, you may like this story on making the most out of Dubai’s food markets.