Summer isn't a season if you plan your shoot calendar properly. Between Morocco, Jordan, the Canary Islands and South Africa, you can find warm light and production-friendly weather somewhere on the map every month of the year.
All four offer established photo and film production infrastructure, with experienced crews, equipment and local production support already in place. Here are a few year-round shooting locations worth building your calendar around, when to book them, and who to call when you land.
Morocco
Four hours from most of Europe, and a country that gives you desert, snowline, medina and Atlantic surf inside one week's travel. Morocco's 30% cash rebate has kept international commercials and features coming back for years, and the crew base in Marrakech and Ouarzazate is deep.
Marrakech and the Agafay Desert
The medina is the obvious draw - ochre walls, latticed light through souk roofing, tiled riad courtyards that behave like ready-made studios. Less obvious, and increasingly the reason people book Marrakech, is what sits 45 minutes outside it. The Agafay is a stone desert of rolling grey-gold hills with the snow-capped Atlas as a backdrop, close enough to base in the city and drive out for a golden hour. Fashion and automotive teams love it for exactly that: dune-scale emptiness without the Sahara's logistics.
Best months: March to May, and late September to November. July and August regularly push past 40°C in the medina, which is punishing on talent and on kit.
Ouarzazate and the Draa Valley
Morocco's studio town. Ouarzazate has hosted decades of features and has the infrastructure to prove it, from soundstages, standing sets, and crews who have built palaces and pyramids before breakfast. Around it sits the real appeal: the kasbah at Aït Benhaddou, famously the city of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s 2026 ‘The Odyssey,’ the palm oases of the Draa, and gorges and dunes running down to the South, all perfect for an ancient backdrop.
Best months: October to April. Winter days are clea and cool with long low sun; the shoulder months of March and November are the sweet spot for desert overnights.
Essaouira
The counter-programme to Marrakech. Essaouira is a walled Atlantic port with bleached ramparts, blue boats, gulls and a permanent onshore wind - and because of that wind, it stays around 22°C when the interior is unbearable. Cool, silvery, diffuse coastal light, which is a gift for beauty and for anything you'd rather not shoot in hard sun. Fashion crews use it as a summer escape valve.
Best months: May to September, when it is the most comfortable place in the country to work. The wind is a factor year-round, so brief your grip team accordingly.
Who to contact: Magic Hour is a Morocco-based executive production company supporting international commercials, fashion and beauty campaigns, photography, branded content and film, with full-service production across the country. Fred Fantun Productions brings long experience of working across Morocco and sourcing locations for varied looks and styles. Ballroom Prod, based in Marrakech, handles commercial production across the region. Saad Films is a service and location company set up specifically to facilitate foreign productions in Morocco, from features and commercials to documentaries and stills.
Jordan
Jordan is built for productions chasing winter sun and scale. In a relatively compact country, you can move from the red desert of Wadi Rum to ancient sandstone cities and the warm waters of the Red Sea, with Amman providing the main production base. Its landscapes have long attracted major international productions, and the country has established production support for foreign crews through the Royal Film Commission of Jordan.
Wadi Rum
The big one. Wadi Rum is a vast landscape of red sand, sandstone cliffs and monumental rock formations that can read as the Middle East, another planet or simply somewhere completely removed from modern life. It has doubled for Mars and other worlds in productions including The Martian, Dune and Star Wars, but its scale works just as well for automotive, fashion and adventure campaigns.
The lack of visual clutter is the real advantage: long horizons, huge rock faces and roads cutting through open desert give you multiple looks without travelling enormous distances.
Best months: October to April. Winter brings cooler shooting temperatures and lower light, while March, April, October and November offer a particularly good balance of warmth and manageable desert conditions.
Petra and Little Petra
Few locations arrive with this much production value already built in. Petra's sandstone façades, narrow Siq and surrounding mountains offer an instantly cinematic ancient-world backdrop, while nearby Little Petra provides a quieter landscape of carved rock, canyons and desert architecture.
For productions that don't need the instantly recognisable Treasury itself, the wider region can be just as useful, giving you the colour and texture of Petra with more flexibility when scouting for the right frame.
Best months: March to May and September to November. Winter is also workable, but mornings and evenings can be surprisingly cold in the desert.
Aqaba and the Red Sea
This is Jordan's answer to the European winter. Aqaba sits on the Red Sea with warm light, clear water, mountains and desert all meeting within a relatively small area. It gives productions a completely different look from Wadi Rum without requiring a change of country: resort lifestyle, beaches, underwater work and open desert can all form part of the same Jordan schedule.
It's particularly useful for swimwear, sport, travel and lifestyle productions looking for dependable winter sun while much of Europe is cold and grey.
Best months: October to April. December to February is particularly appealing for winter-sun productions, while the height of summer can become extremely hot.
Production in Jordan
Jordan has spent years building a production environment around international shoots, with the Royal Film Commission of Jordan supporting the industry and helping facilitate productions in the country. Experienced local crews, location knowledge and the relatively short distances between dramatically different landscapes make it possible to get considerable visual range from one trip.
For a production chasing summer through the European winter, Jordan earns its place on the calendar: shoot desert scale in Wadi Rum, sandstone and ancient-world looks around Petra, then head south to Aqaba for the Red Sea — all without leaving the country.
South Africa
The southern hemisphere half of the calendar. When Europe shuts down for winter, Cape Town moves into peak season, which is why the northern summer catalogue season has been shot there for thirty years. Long daylight hours, a deep and experienced crew base, favourable exchange rates and a Foreign Film Production incentive make it the standard answer for a big-volume shoot in January.
Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula
Table Mountain, the Bo-Kaap's painted terraces, the Atlantic Seaboard beaches at Clifton and Llandudno, and Chapman's Peak Drive. It’s one of the most-shot coastal roads on earth. Within an hour of the city you can double for the Mediterranean, California or the Scottish coast, and studios, rental houses and post are all in town.
Best months: November to April. February to April is the insider pick: still summer, but the south-easterly "Cape Doctor" wind that hammers December and January has usually eased.
The Cape Winelands
Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl Cape Dutch gables, oak avenues, vine rows running up against dramatic mountain granite. Forty-five minutes from Cape Town, so it works as a day trip from a city base, and it delivers food, drink, hospitality and lifestyle looks that would cost far more in Provence or Tuscany.
Best months: February to April for harvest, when the vines are heavy and the light turns golden. September to November gives you green vines and wildflowers.
The Garden Route and the Karoo
Head east and the country changes. The Garden Route gives you indigenous forest, lagoons, and cliffs at Tsitsikamma; turn inland and the Great Karoo opens into semi-desert:vast, flat, empty, with some of the clearest night skies anywhere. It's the road-trip portion of a South African schedule, and the reason automotive campaigns keep coming back.
Best months: October to March for the coast. The Karoo is best in spring and autumn, since midsummer inland heat is severe.
Who to contact: EuroConnection South Africa specialises in bringing European productions into the country. Gavin Schneider Productions is Cape Town-based and covers photo production and equipment. Cape Town Productions, NODOP, and Steel Productions are all long-standing Cape Town members, flexible, and prepared for any brief. For all production companies in South Africa check out our Directory.
The Canary Islands
The closest thing Europe has to a year-round summer. Average temperatures sit in the low twenties in every month, there are more than 300 flight connections to European capitals, and the archipelago packs black beaches, white beaches, volcanoes, laurel forest, desert and modernist architecture into eight islands. The islands' tax rebate is among the most generous in Europe, which is why so much mainland and international work now routes through here.
Lanzarote
The most cinematic surface in the Atlantic. Timanfaya's lava fields read as another planet, with matte black rock, ochre and rust mineral staining, and zero vegetation . The island's César Manrique architecture gives you sculptural whitewashed interiors built into volcanic caves. Car campaigns and sci-fi have been mining it for decades, and it still doesn't look like anywhere else.
Best months: All year round. November to April is prime, when it's the warmest accessible place in Europe and the light is low and long.
Tenerife
The island with the most range. Teide gives you a high-altitude volcanic desert above the cloud line, often shooting in clear sun while the coast sits under cloud. The Anaga range in the north is dense, mossy, prehistoric laurel forest. Add black sand coast, colonial towns like La Orotava, and a full crew base in Santa Cruz, and it’s the Canary island you can build a multi-look shoot on without moving hotel.
Best months: April to June and September to November. Avoid the peak of the summer calima, when Saharan dust can flatten visibility with little notice.
Fuerteventura
Dunes and turquoise water, and very little else. The Corralejo dune field is a huge, clean, minimal set with no visual clutter, and the island's long empty beaches and low horizon lines suit swimwear, sport and anything that needs sky. It's also the windiest of the islands, so it doubles as a reliable kite and watersports location.
Best months: October to May. It stays workable through the summer, but spring gives you the calmest sea and the greenest interior.
In the directory: Paraiso Productions offers full photo and film production across all the Canary Islands, covering location scouting, crews, camera and lighting rental, permits and studios. INEZZ Production works across Tenerife, Mallorca and Barcelona, and A12 Pictures is based in Tenerife with countless shoots across the islands
Other Notable Places to Shoot Year-Round
The right location depends on the brief, but the chase for good weather doesn't stop with Morocco, South Africa, the Canary Islands and Jordan. A few other destinations are worth keeping on the production calendar.
Mallorca, Spain
Mediterranean beaches, dramatic mountain roads, traditional fincas and Palma's historic architecture make Mallorca particularly versatile for lifestyle, fashion and automotive shoots. Best months: April to June and September to October, although productions shoot on the island throughout the year.
Egypt
For scale, Egypt is difficult to compete with. Cairo and Giza deliver urban and historic backdrops, while the desert and Red Sea coast open up completely different possibilities for travel, lifestyle and adventure productions. Best months: October to April, avoiding the most intense summer heat.
The Algarve, Portugal
Golden cliffs, Atlantic beaches, whitewashed towns and long stretches of open road make southern Portugal an easy option for European productions looking for sun without travelling too far. Best months: March to June and September to November.
Dubai and the UAE
When Europe heads into winter, the UAE comes into its own. Modern skylines, vast desert, beaches and high-end architecture make it especially useful for automotive, luxury, fashion and lifestyle campaigns. Best months: November to March.
Southern California, USA
Beach in the morning, city in the afternoon and desert by sunset: Southern California has been a production favourite for a reason. Los Angeles also gives international productions access to one of the deepest crew, equipment and studio bases in the world. Best months: Year-round, depending on the look you're chasing.
Wherever you land, the crew is already there. Browse the full Photo & Film Production directory to find your team.
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