Where to photograph Fes and Morocco, and when the light is right

Fes el-Bali is arguably the most intact medieval city on earth. Its thousands of lanes are narrow and dark through the middle of the day, then brilliant in the low morning and late-afternoon light that rakes between the walls — the hours to be out with a camera. The Bou Inania and Al-Attarine medersas, two of the great Marinid colleges, hold courtyards of carved cedar, sculpted stucco and zellige tile that photograph magnificently when the interior light is right (mid-morning in winter, earlier in summer). Entry is straightforward and a small fee applies.

The Chouara tanneries — the ancient dyeing pits seen from the leather terraces above — are the single most reproduced image of Fes, and they earn it. The stone vats sit like a painter's palette, filled with natural dye: saffron yellow, poppy red, indigo blue, mint green. Shoot mid-morning, when the men are working and the colours are freshest, and bring a 70–200mm to frame the grid of vats without distortion. The shopkeepers will hand you a sprig of fresh mint to soften the smell of the tanning agents.

For the wide view, climb to a medina rooftop terrace at first light, when the minarets and green-tiled roofs catch the sun before the lanes below do. Then walk down to Bab Bou Jeloud, the blue-and-green keyhole gate, and use its arch to frame the minarets of the Bou Inania beyond — the classic establishing shot of the old city.

An hour west of Fes, the Roman ruins of Volubilis give you standing columns, mosaic floors and the Tingis arch against open farmland — best in late afternoon, when the stone warms and the hills behind soften. Pair it with the white hillside town of Moulay Idriss, draped over two outcrops, and the monumental Bab Mansour gate at Meknes. A wide-angle captures the scale of Volubilis; a short telephoto isolates the town's tumbling rooftops.

Many Fes-based itineraries run south to the dunes, and they are the country's most dramatic landscape. Erg Chebbi near Merzouga — around seven to eight hours from Fes via Midelt and Errachidia — rises to 150 metres and shifts from gold to deep amber to near violet across a single sunset. The logic is simple: arrive the afternoon before, ride into the dunes in the late light, and be on a high ridge by 5:30am the next morning.

Sunrise light in the Sahara is exceptional — low, warm and raking across the rippled sand to produce the shadow-and-highlight texture that makes dune photography work. A 24–70mm holds the broad landscape; a 70–200mm isolates a single ridge with compressed perspective. In the hour after dawn the sky is often entirely clear, an extraordinary blue against the orange sand.

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

Roughly three to four hours north of Fes, the blue city of the Rif is Morocco's most-searched photography destination — and its most crowded, busiest between 10am and 4pm. The fix is to stay overnight and work at dawn and dusk. The Rue Targhi staircase, the town's most iconic lane, is essentially empty at 7am and glorious in the warm, 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 — best at sunrise, before the groups arrive.

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

If your trip continues beyond the dunes, the Draa Valley and the road toward Ouarzazate form a landscape photographer's corridor of pink-red earth, palmeries and earthen kasbahs. 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 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.

Trips that extend toward the south reach the most classical mountain landscape in Morocco. The Imlil valley has green-terraced fields and flat-roofed Amazigh 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.

The most compelling images in Fes involve people — coppersmiths at Place Seffarine, tanners at the pits, weavers and tile cutters at their benches, market traders in the souk. 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.
• In a few settings — performers and henna artists in busy squares, for instance — a small payment for a photograph is expected. This is understood and fair; agree a figure (10–20 MAD) in advance.

Our private guides can arrange workshop visits with artisans 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.