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Essouria.
We have recently returned from a three week trip travelling around Morocco - why Morocco ? I hear you cry. Well its a good question and the truth is it was driven by a number of factors; the first was that we had a large sum of money on deposit with a travel company which had been forced, due to to the security situation there, to cancel a trip we had planned to the tribal districts of Pakistan. Secondly we had a limited amount of time available between commercial work in the UK. Morocco was, as we expected, very touristy in the main parts, it has amazing architecture and sites, but from a portraiture point of view it was a non starter. Moroccans frankly do not like being photographed and there were occasions, even when taking landscape photographs using a wide angle lens, someone 80 yards away, at the edge of the frame, would rush towards me gesticulating and shouting loudly. The guide / fixer we used amazingly insisted that this was very rare, despite the fact that it happened repeatedly, ( he finally gave up saying this after a week or so ). Did we manage to get commercial images ? Yes. Would we return to the country ? Certainly not to shoot commercial images. Would it be a good place to go with no commercial imperative and to have a holiday ? Yes.
If you decide to go to the country the one place that we recommend you should not miss and that seems the most relaxed and at ease with itself is Essouria on the Atlantic coast. True there are a large number of tourists but the town is unspoilt and retains great character and charm, more importantly from our perspective, photographers are treated as mild eccentrics rather than as a threat. We wandered around here for a couple of days and thoroughly enjoyed the place and the place seemed to like us too. A few shots here to give you our impressions of the town of Essouria
Copyright Paul Strawson - Blog ref: 89
