Where are Morocco's best photography spots?

Morocco is a photographer's country in a way few places are — a dense run of subjects (landscape, architecture, craft, portraiture, light) packed into a geography you can cover in ten to fourteen days. We work from the blue city, so this guide opens in the north, where the indigo medina of Chefchaouen and the green Rif make some of the most distinctive frames in the country, before following the road south to the desert. What it all asks of you is timing, local knowledge and the cultural care that rewards the prepared.

Chefchaouen — the blue medina and the Spanish Mosque

The blue city of the Rif is, by some distance, the most-searched Moroccan photography subject — and our own doorstep. The catch is that it is also popular, and the loveliest lanes fill between 10am and 4pm. The answer is to stay overnight and work the edges of the day. The Rue Targhi staircase, the town's most photographed lane, is all but empty at 7am and luminous in the soft, flat light before the sun clears the valley walls. The Spanish Mosque terrace above the medina — a twenty-minute uphill walk — gives the wide panorama over the blue rooftops, at its best at sunrise before any groups arrive.

Down at the medina's edge, Ras el-Maa — the cascade where local women still rinse cloth — frames movement and daily life against running water, while the painted doorways, pots and staircases reward patient, close-in work with a standard lens. For a fuller treatment of the town, see our dedicated Chefchaouen guide.

The Sahara — Erg Chebbi and Erg Chigaga

South of the blue city, the great Saharan ergs are Morocco's most dramatic desert landscape. Erg Chebbi near Merzouga — a long drive from the north, or reached via Errachidia — rises to some 150 metres and shifts from gold to deep amber to near-violet across a single sunset. The plan writes itself: arrive the afternoon before, ride into the dunes late in the day, and be set on a high ridge by 5:30am the next morning.

Saharan sunrise light is exceptional — low, warm and raking across the rippled sand to throw the shadow-and-highlight texture that makes dune work sing. A 24–70mm holds the wider scene; a 70–200mm isolates a single ridge with compressed perspective. In the hour after dawn the sky is often cloudless and an extraordinary blue against the orange sand.

Erg Chigaga, further south near M'hamid, is remoter and far less visited. Reaching it takes a 4×4 or an overnight camel trek, but the reward is real solitude — hour upon hour of dunes with no other camp in sight.

The Fès el-Bali medina and the Chouara tanneries

A scenic four-hour drive south of Chefchaouen, Fès old city is among the most complete medieval environments anywhere. Its 9,000-odd alleyways run narrow and dark through the middle of the day, then turn brilliant in the low morning or afternoon light that rakes between the walls. The Bou Inania Medersa — the city's finest Marinid-era school — has a courtyard of carved cedar, stucco and zellige that photographs magnificently when the interior light is right (mid-morning in winter, earlier in summer). Entry and photography are straightforward; a small fee applies.

The Chouara tanneries — the ancient dyeing pits seen from the leather shops above — are the most reproduced image of Moroccan craft. The stone vats sit like a painter's palette, filled with natural dye: saffron yellow, poppy red, indigo blue, mint green. Mid-morning is best, when the workers are active and the colours are freshest. Bring a 70–200mm to frame the pattern of the vats without distortion. The shops will hand you a sprig of fresh mint to offset the smell of the tanning agents.

The Rif and Akchour — green gorges above the blue city

Most visitors photograph the blue lanes and stop there, but the mountains around Chefchaouen are a landscape subject in their own right. A short drive east into Talassemtane National Park reaches Akchour, where two trails follow clear pools and pine-shaded gorges. The riverside path to the lower waterfall frames falling water and reflected green, while the longer climb to the natural rock arch known as the God's Bridge gives a dramatic wide-angle of stone spanning the chasm. The light reaches the gorge floor for only a few midday hours, so plan your shooting window.

For a more considered approach to the town that anchors all of this, see our dedicated Chefchaouen guide.

The Draa Valley, kasbahs and the road south

Further south, the route over the Tizi n'Tichka pass and down into the Draa Valley is one of the great Moroccan drives — and a landscape corridor. The pass itself (2,260 metres) is stark and mineral; the descent toward the Ouarzazate plateau opens onto 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 cluster of fortified earthen towers (a ksar is a fortified village) that looks most dramatic in late afternoon, when the mud walls glow against the sinking sun.

Beyond it, the Draa Valley palmeries run for nearly 200 kilometres — date palms, irrigated gardens (the seguia 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 holds the scale; a telephoto pulls in the palm-frond texture against the sky.

The High Atlas — Imlil, Ouirgane and the Toubkal region

The High Atlas holds the most classical mountain landscape work in Morocco. The Imlil valley, two hours from Marrakech, sets green-terraced fields and flat-roofed Berber villages against a 4,000-metre rock wall — the defining Moroccan mountain image. Spring brings blossom to the lower villages (March–April); summer is green and crisp; winter lays snow above 2,000 metres. The approach road from Asni to Imlil offers plenty of places to pull over.

The Todra Gorge, east of the Atlas near Tinerhir, is a slot canyon where sheer 300-metre walls close to fifteen metres across. Direct light reaches the canyon floor for only two or three hours around midday — the window worth shooting here. The vertical orange rock and the thin stream at the base are extraordinary with a wide-angle.

Photographing people: how to do it well and respectfully

Morocco's strongest photography involves people — weavers and wool-dyers in the Chefchaouen souk, market traders, Saharan guides, Berber women at the loom. The rules are simple but worth saying out loud:

• Always ask before photographing someone close up. A gesture and a little eye contact carries the question. Accept a no without haggling or payment pressure.
• Taking an interest in an artisan's work — asking about the process, buying a piece — almost always brings a natural willingness to be photographed. The exchange is social, not transactional.
• Street work at medium distance (70–135mm) is standard and generally welcome. Pushing a wide-angle into someone's face is not.
• Show people the frame on your screen. The reaction is nearly always warm and often opens a longer conversation.
• A few settings — staged performers, snake charmers, henna artists — expect a small payment for a photograph. That is understood and fair; agree a figure (10–20 MAD) before you shoot.

Our private guides can set up workshop visits with artisans who have agreed to photography in advance — the gap in quality between a tense and a relaxed, consenting subject is enormous. See our private guide services and photography-focused tours.

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