I have been teaching photography in Africa for many years, but mainly to places like Tanzania, Botswana and places where we look for wildlife. This time around, I am visiting the North of Africa, to see the sights of Morocco. This is a test trip for me, as I fine tune the next trip here with my photo tour. Before coming to Morocco, I had many of my friends tell me that this was one of their favorite locations in the world, and I can tell you that photographically, it is a treasure trove of opportunities.
For this "test trip", it was just Laura and I with our guide and driver.
We arrived in Casablanca a couple of days early, to get time adjusted, and did a little exploring on our own.
I looked for good vantage points for photos, and the rain provided some nice reflections on the ground.
The mosaic work is just beautiful.
I played around with different views of the mosque, this time pointing straight up to get a photo of the detail work in the ceiling, while also including the minaret in the frame.
For this shot, I got down low and just photographed the repeating patterns of tile work.
As always, I try to shoot wide and tight, to show the different views of similar subjects. We also learned from our guide that each pattern of mosaic has it's own meaning. As you will see in a future blog post, creating these gorgeous mosaics by hand is a very intricate process, done by skilled artisans.
We had a great time walking around the French market in Casablanca. If you have followed the blog for a long time, you know that I love photographing the local people in all the countries I visit. Here in Morocco, it is important to ask people for permission before taking photos of them. This man was OK with me taking his portrait.
If you have ever been to Morocco, you know that they love their olives here. They are served with bread at just about every meal. I saw this vendor selling loads of olives and took numerous photos of him and his stand. For this photo, I zoomed out quickly as I was taking the shot, creating a slight motion blur at the edges of the frame.
As we walked further into the market, we saw more and more olive vendors. I looked at different ways to capture photos of them. This time I focused on the nearby olives at f/4 (making them the subject) and let the vendor go out of focus (becoming the supporting subject).
For this shot, I decided not to include the vendor at all, but to just focus on the many varieties of olives being offered. I should also mention that I love olives and have never eaten so many in a one week period.
We made a second visit to the Hassan II, this time capturing the mosque from a distance. The skies were grey and cloudy, which added an interesting mood to this wide shot.
The next day was our first official day on tour, meeting our guide and driver for the first time.
The first location on our tour was back to the Hassan II Mosque, but this time for a visit inside. Ali, our guide, not only gave us some great insights, he also acted as our model for this really cool silhouette shot.
I also enjoyed photographing the reflections.
For the first time ever, I decided to bring a fisheye lens with me on a photo tour. I figured that we would be going inside some interesting buildings and thought it might make for some unique photos. After using the new
Canon RF 7-14mm lens often at the Olympics in Milan, I have become a fan of really wide shots.
Just like in the Galleria of Milan, I pointed my camera straight up to the ceiling for this very interesting perspective.
This is the prayer area underneath the mosque. I waited for the other tourists to leave and took this fisheye shot.
After visiting the mosque, we went to one of the local markets. Unlike the market Laura and I had visited in the previous days, this one was more for the locals than the tourists. I like that a lot more!
This guy was making filo dough, and flipping it in the air. I HAD to get a good action shot of that! I turned up the burst rate of the Canon R5 Mark II and fired off a bunch of frames to get this one (which I liked the best).
In the late afternoon we went back to our hotel for a rest before having dinner and doing night shots. I noticed that the rain had stopped and we had blue skies. I sent a message to our guide and asked if we could go back to the mosque yet again for some photos in better weather.
In the quest to get something different, I tried the RF 7-14mm fisheye lens once again.
I also went back to a location that I had scouted on our earlier visit, knowing that this image would look even better now that we had blue skies and clouds. I used the RF 24-105mm f/4 lens for this shot.
After taking those photos, we went to dinner and waited for sunset and the blue hour. While waiting for the sunset to happen, we walked around to see some other interesting sites. I saw these apartment buildings and liked the murals which were painted on the sides (which is very common in Casablanca).
Just after 8pm, the sun was gone and we had the right amount of light for my "blue hour shot" over the water. So pretty! I used the Canon R6 Mark III with the RF 100-500mm lens since we were pretty far away from the subject.
This last shot was not planned, but as we were walking back to our vehicle, I saw that the local lighthouse was lit nicely, and in front of great colors in the sky. I framed it a little wider than I normally would, to get some of the blue in the sky at the top of the image. It was a great way to end our last full day in Casablanca.
There is SO much more to come from this amazing country. And for all of you asking, yes, I will be planning a photo tour here in 2028. If you are interested, let me know.
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