Colours of Morocco, from Desert to Coast

Morocco Photography Tour 10-18 February 2024

Please enquire with us for new dates (TBA). Workshop details remain as follows.

Our Morocco photography tour is open to photographers of all levels. Join us if you are looking to hone your creative photography skills and travel to Morocco’s most compelling landscapes, from desert to coast.

Experience the contrast of the iconic cityscapes of Marrakech and Essaouira with the remote Saharan dunes and Anti-Atlas mountains near Tafraoute.

We run our Morocco photography tour around the period of the new moon to maximise opportunities for night photography.

We arrange for you to camp under the Milky Way for 3 nights, with one wilderness camp next to the canyon mountains of Iriqui National Park, and two nights at Erg Chigaga dunes.

Your tutor will ensure that you reach the right place at the right time to capture beautiful landscape and cityscape photos, and offer expert guidance throughout the tour.

Who is the Wild Morocco photography tour designed for?

Our Morocco photography tour is designed for all landscape photographers who love to explore and enjoy getting off the beaten track. While we will certainly visit some well known and iconic places in Morocco (Marrakech, Essaouira, Ait Ben Haddou UNESCO site, the Sahara), the major part of the photo tour will be spent in less-visited but equally, if not more, beautiful areas. 

By travelling in Winter, we won’t share those places with many other visitors, which will make the photography adventure even more enjoyable. 

For those interested in night/astro photography, we have ensured to plan the tour close to a new moon, so we can experience and photograph beautiful night skies in the Sahara desert (i.e. at Erg Chigaga dunes in the Iriqui National Park). This location is 60km away from the nearest light pollution.

If you would like to join the tour, we recommend a good knowledge of your photography equipment. This way we will focus more on the creative part of photography and take full advantage of the unique landscapes and cityscapes we visit.

You should expect to wake early to photograph sunrise – in February sunrise is as late as 8am and the Milky Way will appear around 6am.

During our time in the desert we will hike and climb various dunes around the desert camp. The hikes can take between one and two hours – we may do several hikes a day. However, there is enough flexibility to skip some of the longer hikes and photograph the dunes closer to camp instead. For the Tafraoute area it will be similar, with various scouting hikes during day and later to reach our photo spots for sunset and sunrise.

Your experienced local guides and tutor Michael, who has already been to Morocco twice and scouted the locations in advance, will ensure that you’ll be taken care of during the tour. While the focus of our Morocco photography tour is to get you to the right place at the right time to take beautiful images, you will also receive tuition about landscape and cityscape photography techniques, such as usage of filters, focus stacking or night photography, and get tips on composition, if needed. Beyond that Michael always has an open ear for questions and is glad to share his knowledge.

About your tutor

Michael Breitung is an award-winning, established landscape photographer from Germany. In the last 10 years he has visited and photographed more than 20 countries around the world. A selection of his images may be viewed on his homepage www.mibreit-photo.com .
Michael is also a keen explorer and Morocco very quickly drew him in. He instantly fell in love with the tranquility of the Moroccan landscapes and wants to share his passion for those same places with you. Michael will be guiding you to some of his favourite locations in Morocco, a large part of which are off the beaten track, and make for a compelling photo adventure tour.

He recently scooped photo of the year for his Milky Way image above the Erg Chigaga dunes. Read more on digitalphoto.de

What to bring

DSLR or Mirrorless camera;

To get the most out of the tour, participants should bring both a wide-angle and a tele lens. The long lens will be particularly important in the Sahara desert. Good focal lengths for the long lens are 70-200, 70-300 or 100-400mm;

To photograph the night sky in the Sahara desert, a fast wide-angle lens is necessary. Recommended are f/2.8 or faster. Note: there will be plenty of other photo opportunities where no fast lens is necessary;

A tripod;

Spare batteries for our two days in the Erg Chigaga dunes. There are limited possibilities to recharge gear in the evening;

Flashlights for our hikes in the Sahara desert;

Good hiking boots/shoes for our hikes around Tafraoute;

Notebooks are optional for participants who want image critique and post processing tips during our tour.

Additional information

This will be an opportune time of year to participate in the Wild Morocco photography tour. We will be camping in the Erg Chigaga dunes just after a new moon with clear night skies to see and photograph the stars above the Iriqui National Park. The Erg Chigaga dunes is one of the best places in Morocco to photograph the stars, being 60km away from the nearest light pollution and not crowded. We will see many stars and experience true desert nights in relative isolation.

Please contact us to reserve your place or for further details.