Where are Morocco's best photography spots?

Our home ground is the Sahara, and standing on a dune ridge as the sun comes up is about the best argument for Morocco as a photographer's country we know. But the case runs wider than the desert: few places pack this much worth shooting — landscape, architecture, craft, faces, light — into a map you can cover in ten to fourteen days. The catch is that it all turns on timing, local knowledge and a bit of cultural care. What follows is what we've learned guiding photographers to the spots that actually deliver, starting with the sand.

The Sahara — Erg Chebbi and Erg Chigaga

The great Saharan ergs of Morocco are not Morocco's only desert landscape, but they are its most dramatic. Erg Chebbi near Merzouga — accessible from Errachidia airport or via a nine-hour drive from Marrakech — rises to 150 metres and turns from gold to deep amber to almost violet across the course of a sunset. The photography logic is simple: arrive the afternoon before, ride camels into the dunes in the late afternoon, be positioned at the high dune ridge by 5:30am the following morning.

The quality of the sunrise light in the Sahara is exceptional — low, warm, raking across the rippled sand surface in a way that produces the shadow-and-highlight texture that makes dune photography compelling. A 24–70mm captures the broader landscape; a 70–200mm allows you to isolate a single dune ridge with compressed perspective. The sky in the hour after dawn is often entirely clear and an extraordinary blue against the orange sand.

Erg Chigaga, further south near M'hamid, is more remote and less visited. It requires a 4×4 or an overnight camel trek to reach, but rewards with genuine solitude — hours of dunes with no other camp in sight.

The Fès el-Bali medina and the Chouara tanneries

Fès old city is arguably the most intact medieval urban environment in the world. The medina's 9,000-odd alleyways are narrow, dark towards the middle of the day and brilliant in the low morning or afternoon light that rakes between the walls. The Bou Inania Medersa — the city's finest Marinid-era religious school — has a courtyard of carved cedar, stucco and zellige tile that photographs magnificently when the interior light is right (mid-morning in winter, earlier in summer). Permission to enter and photograph is straightforward; a small entry fee applies.

The Chouara tanneries — the ancient leather dyeing pits viewed from the leather shops above — are the most reproduced image of Moroccan craft. The stone vats are arranged like a palette, filled with natural dyes: saffron yellow, poppy red, indigo blue, mint green. The best time is mid-morning, when the workers are active and the colours are freshest. Bring a telephoto — 70–200mm — to frame the patterns of the vats without distortion. The leather shops will offer you a sprig of fresh mint to counteract the smell of the tanning agents.

Chefchaouen — the blue medina

The blue city of the Rif Mountains is the most-searched Moroccan photography destination. The challenge is that it is also the most visited, and the best spots become crowded between 10am and 4pm. The solution is simple: stay overnight, work at dawn and dusk. The Rue Targhi staircase — the town's most iconic lane — is essentially empty at 7am and extraordinary in the warm, flat light before the sun clears the valley walls. The Spanish mosque terrace above the medina, reached by a twenty-minute uphill walk, offers the wide panoramic view over the blue rooftops — best at sunrise, before the tour groups arrive.

For a more considered approach to Chefchaouen, see our dedicated Chefchaouen guide.

The Draa Valley, kasbahs and the road south

The route south from Marrakech through the Tizi n'Tichka pass and down into the Draa Valley is one of the great Moroccan drives — and a landscape photographer's corridor. The pass itself (2,260 metres) is stark and mineral; the descent into the Ouarzazate plateau reveals flat light, pink-red earth and the distant shimmer of the Draa River. The Aït Benhaddou ksar — a Unesco World Heritage site thirty minutes west of Ouarzazate — is a collection of fortified earthen towers (ksar means fortified village) that looks most dramatic in the late afternoon, when the mud walls glow against the declining sun.

Continuing south, the Draa Valley palmeries stretch for nearly 200 kilometres — date palms, irrigated gardens (the seguia irrigation canals are Berber engineering from the eleventh century), and earth-built villages in amber and ochre. Stop at the Kasbah Tamnougalt and the Agdz palmery. A 24mm wide-angle captures the scale; a telephoto brings in the palm frond texture against the sky.

The High Atlas — Imlil, Ouirgane and the Toubkal region

The High Atlas provides the most classical mountain landscape photography in Morocco. The Imlil valley, two hours from Marrakech, has the green-terraced fields and flat-roofed Berber villages against a 4,000-metre rock backdrop that defines the Moroccan mountain aesthetic. Spring brings cherry blossom to the lower villages (March–April); summer is green and crisp; winter brings snow above 2,000 metres. The approach road from Asni to Imlil offers numerous stopping points.

The Todra Gorge, east of the Atlas near Tinerhir, is a slot canyon where sheer 300-metre walls narrow to fifteen metres across. The light falls directly to the canyon floor for two to three hours around midday — the only time of day worth photographing here. The vertical orange rock and the small stream at the base are extraordinary with a wide-angle.

Photographing people: how to do it well and respectfully

Morocco's most compelling photography involves people — craftsmen, market traders, Saharan guides, Berber women at weaving looms. The rules are straightforward but worth stating explicitly:

• Always ask before photographing someone at close range. A gesture and eye contact communicates the question. Respect a refusal without negotiation or payment pressure.
• Engaging with a craftsman's work — asking about the process, buying something — almost always produces a natural willingness to be photographed. The transaction is social, not transactional.
• Street photography at medium distance (70–135mm) is standard and generally accepted. Pointing a wide-angle into someone's face is not.
• Show people their image on the camera screen. The reaction is almost always positive and often opens a longer conversation.
• Some locations — the Jemaa el-Fna square, the snake charmers, the henna artists — expect a small payment for photographs. This is understood and fair; agree a figure (10–20 MAD) in advance.

Our private guides can arrange workshop visits with craftsmen who have agreed to photography in advance — the difference in image quality from a relaxed, consenting subject is enormous. See our private guide services and photography-focused tours.

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