Where do you point the camera on a Morocco trek?

Few countries reward a walking photographer like Morocco. Within ten to fourteen days on foot and on the road you can shoot high mountain light, desert dawns, medieval cities, working craft and Berber portraiture — but only if you turn up at the right hour and carry yourself well in someone else's home. This guide comes straight from the trail, written over years of leading photographers to the places and the light that actually deliver.

The Sahara — Erg Chebbi and Erg Chigaga

The great ergs are not Morocco's only desert, but they are its most cinematic — and after a High Atlas trek the contrast hits hard. Erg Chebbi by Merzouga — reachable from Errachidia or a long drive from Marrakech — throws up dunes to 150 metres that slide from gold through amber to near-violet as the sun drops. The plan is straightforward: arrive the afternoon before, walk or ride into the sand for the evening, and be set on a high ridge by 5:30am.

That sunrise light is the prize — low, warm, raking across the ripples to carve out the shadow-and-highlight texture dune work lives on. A 24–70mm holds the wider scene; a 70–200mm lets you pull a single crest out of the mass with compressed perspective. In the hour after dawn the sky is often dead clear, an electric blue against the orange. Travel light up the dune — soft sand and camera bags do not mix.

Erg Chigaga, further south near M'hamid, is wilder and far less trodden. Reaching it means a 4×4 or an overnight camel trek, but the payoff is real solitude — hours of dunes with not another camp in sight, the kind of emptiness a trekker comes for.

The Fès el-Bali medina and the Chouara tanneries

Fès old city may be the most complete medieval townscape left standing anywhere. Its 9,000-odd lanes run narrow and go dark by midday, then turn brilliant when low morning or late light rakes between the walls — plan your shooting around those windows. The Bou Inania Medersa, the city's finest Marinid school, holds a courtyard of carved cedar, stucco and zellige that sings when the interior light lands right (mid-morning in winter, earlier come summer). Entry and photography are simple; a small fee applies.

The Chouara tanneries — the old dye pits seen from the leather terraces above — are the single most reproduced image of Moroccan craft, and worth the climb of stairs anyway. The stone vats sit like a paint box: saffron yellow, poppy red, indigo, mint green. Mid-morning is best, when the dyers are working and the colours are fresh. Reach for a 70–200mm to frame the grid of vats cleanly. The shopkeepers will hand you a sprig of mint to hold against the tanning reek — take it.

Chefchaouen — the blue medina

The blue town of the Rif is the most-searched photo spot in Morocco — and, predictably, the most crowded between 10am and 4pm. The fix is a trekker's instinct: sleep there and work the edges of the day. The Rue Targhi staircase, the town's signature lane, is all but empty at 7am and glorious in the flat, warm light before the sun tops the valley walls. The Spanish mosque terraceabove the medina, a twenty-minute uphill walk that doubles as a decent warm-up, opens up the wide panorama over the blue roofs — shoot it at sunrise, before the coaches arrive.

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

The Draa Valley, kasbahs and the road south

The road south from Marrakech over the Tizi n'Tichka and down toward the Draa is one of Morocco's great drives and a landscape corridor — we often hang a short walk off it to break the journey. The pass (2,260 metres) is stark and mineral; the drop to the Ouarzazate plateau opens out into pink-red earth and the distant glint of the Draa. The Aït Benhaddou ksar — UNESCO-listed, thirty minutes west of Ouarzazate — is a cluster of fortified earthen towers (a ksar is a fortified village) that is best worked late in the afternoon, when the mud walls catch fire against the low sun.

Carry on south and the Draa Valley palmeries run for nearly 200 kilometres — date palms, irrigated gardens fed by seguia canals (Berber waterworks dating to the eleventh century), and earth villages in amber and ochre, all walkable on foot. Stop at Kasbah Tamnougalt and the Agdz palmery. A 24mm wide-angle holds the scale; a telephoto pulls the frond texture against the sky.

The High Atlas — Imlil, Ouirgane and the Toubkal region

This is our home ground, and the most classical mountain photography in the country. The Imlil valley, two hours from Marrakech and the gateway to Toubkal, lays out green terraces and flat-roofed Berber villages beneath 4,000-metre walls — the defining Moroccan mountain frame, and one you shoot properly only by walking into it. Cherry and walnut blossom soften the lower villages in March–April; summer is green and sharp; winter dusts everything above 2,000 metres in snow. From Imlil the trails toward Aroumd, the Toubkal refuge and the high passes hand you a new vantage every hour — the reward for being on foot rather than behind a windscreen.

The Todra Gorge, on the Atlas's eastern flank near Tinerhir, is a slot canyon whose sheer 300-metre walls pinch to fifteen metres across. Direct light reaches the floor for only two or three hours around midday — the single window worth shooting here, and handily the time you will be walking through. The vertical orange rock and the thread of stream at the base are made for a wide-angle.

Photographing people: how to do it well and respectfully

The strongest frames you will take here have people in them — muleteers, market traders, Saharan guides, Berber women at the loom. The rules are simple but worth spelling out, especially as a guest in a mountain village:

• Ask before any close shot. A gesture and a held gaze does the asking; if the answer is no, leave it there — no haggling, no waving money.
• Take a real interest in a craftsman's work — ask how it is done, buy a piece — and the willingness to be photographed usually follows. The exchange is human, not a transaction.
• Working at a medium distance (70–135mm) is accepted and unobtrusive. Shoving a wide-angle into someone's face is not.
• Show people the back of the camera. The reaction is nearly always warm and often opens up a longer encounter — and a better second frame.
• In a few spots — Jemaa el-Fna, the snake charmers, the henna artists — a small payment for a photo is expected and fair; settle a figure (10–20 MAD) up front.

Our mountain guides can set up village and workshop visits with people who have agreed to be photographed in advance — the jump in quality from a relaxed, willing subject is enormous, and the introduction is half the picture. See our private guide services and photography-focused tours.

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