Morocco rewards photographers who are willing to get up early and stay out late, more than almost anywhere else I have guided. The country changes character completely depending on the hour, and knowing where to be for which light is most of the work — the rest is patience.
Blue hour in Chefchaouen
The blue city earns its photographs in the twenty or so minutes before sunrise and just after sunset, when the ambient sky light turns the already-blue walls a genuinely different, deeper shade than they show at midday. The narrow lanes mean direct sun creates hard shadows for much of the day, so blue hour, and the soft light either side of it, is when the medina photographs best — and when it is also, usefully, at its quietest.
Dawn on the dunes
For anyone heading to Merzouga or the deep desert, sunrise on the high dune is close to essential rather than optional. Climb in the dark — twenty minutes or so — and the payoff is watching the ridgelines of the erg emerge one by one as the light comes up, throwing long shadows across the sand that disappear entirely by mid-morning. Sunset works too, but I find dawn gives cleaner, sharper shadow lines before the day's heat haze builds.
Medina alleys and kasbahs at golden hour
The hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset turn earthen kasbahs — Ait Ben Haddou especially — a genuine warm ochre-gold that the same walls simply do not show at midday. In the medinas, narrow lanes catch shafts of low side-light at these hours in a way that a flat midday sun cannot replicate, and it is worth timing a walk specifically around it rather than treating photography as an afterthought to sightseeing.
Photographing people, properly
This matters more than any technical advice I can give: always ask before photographing someone directly, and accept a refusal completely and immediately, without argument or a second attempt. A smile, a gesture toward the camera and a moment's pause is usually enough to ask, even without shared language. Some people will say yes happily; some will decline, and that is entirely their right. A small tip is often appropriate and appreciated if someone poses for you specifically, particularly performers or people in traditional dress at a market. I would also say plainly: do not photograph police, military personnel or sensitive government buildings — it is genuinely against the law here, not just poor etiquette, and it is an easy rule to simply follow rather than test.
Gear, briefly
You do not need a large kit to do well here. A single versatile zoom covers most medina and landscape work; a wider lens earns its place in the dunes and the gorges, where the scale of the landscape is the whole point. Dust is the real enemy in the desert far more than any camera setting — a basic rain cover or dry bag for downtime between shots, and a proper blower and cloth for cleaning, matter more than an extra lens most guests bring and rarely use.