What's a good photography Morocco itinerary?

A photography trip lives or dies on timing, so I plan every stop around golden hours and crowd patterns rather than a generic sightseeing list. We start in Chefchaouen, the blue city in the Rif, and I get you out before dawn — the washed-blue lanes, the staircases draped in flower pots, and the cats are all yours before the day-trippers arrive. Late afternoon we climb to the Spanish Mosque viewpoint for the town glowing against the mountains. Two nights here means two shots at the light if one morning clouds over.

Fes is the trip's portrait-and-texture chapter. With a local fixer we shoot the tanneries from the leather-shop balconies in mid-morning light, the dye pots and the donkeys, the coppersmiths, and the geometry of the madrasas. The medina is gloriously chaotic, so I build in time for slow street photography and a rooftop café for the call-to-prayer panorama. I also coach travellers on asking permission and tipping for portraits — it makes for better, more human images and avoids friction.

Then the landscapes. We cross to the Sahara at Erg Chebbi and stay two nights so you shoot the dunes at both sunset and the far-better sunrise, with a camel caravan as foreground and the ripples raking with shadow. On the way west we hit Aït Ben Haddou for golden hour, when the mud-brick kasbah turns molten against the hills, and the Todra Gorge for towering canyon scale. These are the frames people travel to Morocco for, and the second desert night is what guarantees you get them.

We finish in Marrakech, the most layered city to shoot — the souks' shafts of light through reed roofs, the dyers' souk, the tanneries, Jemaa el-Fnaa erupting into smoke and lanterns at dusk, and rooftop terraces over the Koutoubia at sunset. I keep drives sensible so you arrive at each location fresh and on time for the light, and I leave the middle of hot days for editing and tea. Done this way, ten days gives a photographer a portfolio rather than a camera roll.