Tom May

Tom May

Tom May is a freelance writer and editor specializing in art, photography, design and travel. He has been editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. He has also worked for a wide range of mainstream titles including The Sun, Radio Times, NME, T3, Heat, Company and Bella.

Latest articles by Tom May

One of the best ultrawide monitors, on an office desk surrounded by plants
The best ultrawide monitor in 2026: get more screen space for your photo editing

By Ben Andrews Last updated

Updated A 21:9 ratio or wider gives you space to see a lot more at once

Updated
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The Vogue photographer who never let his models stand still: Neil Kirk spent decades capturing supermodels mid-stride, mid-leap and mid-laugh

By Tom May Published

NEWS A new monograph traces a fashion career based on catching genuine movement rather than staged poses

NEWS
Kate Moss sits on a staircase in a fur coat, gripping a cigarette packet on the handrail as she looks down at her feet.
For 20 years, everyone assumed Kate Moss was drunk on that staircase. Greg Brennan, who took the photo, says she was just waiting for a car home from a party

By Tom May Published

NEWS A new book from veteran press photographer Greg Brennan reminds us that the story people tell about a photo can matter as much as the photo itself

NEWS
Woman in front of her laptop, talking on the best webcam
The best webcam for working from home

By Tom May Last updated

Buying guide Ditch the grainy, badly lit picture your laptop gives you on every call, with a dedicated webcam built for looking your best

Buying guide
Best document camera
Best document camera: which visualizer is the right one for teaching and presentations?

By Adam Juniper Last updated

buying guide Perfect for teaching, presentations, pitches and more, these are the best document cameras available today.

buying guide
Dog looking out over wall with man behind
Most photographers visiting Cuba's capital focus on the Chevys and cigars. David Saxe took a very different approach: going after the blur, the shadows and the things nobody poses for

By Tom May Published

News Cuba es Vida trades postcard shots for grain, darkness and imperfection, and it's a useful lesson for every photographer

News
Three portraits: a woman with short dark hair and glasses crosses her arms; a woman with curly orange hair and small horns looks up; a black-and-white image of a woman lighting a cigarette.
What does it take to take a truly great celebrity portrait? From shooting Amy Winehouse to Yoko Ono, photographer Jillian Edelstein has spent a career finding out

By Tom May Published

NEWS Want to find the human truth behind your subject's mask? Here's a great example to follow, now in the spotlight of a new exhibition

NEWS
Doctor using the best otoscope to examine a woman's ear
The best otoscopes for parents, medical students and pet owners

By Adam Juniper Last updated

Updated Check for health problems in your own ears, your family's and your pets, with the best otoscopes

Updated
Close-up of Apple iPad Pro M4 camera
The best tablet camera in 2026: iPads, Android and Windows tablets with photo smarts

By Mike Harris Last updated

buying guide Want to take pictures with a tablet? We round up the best tablet cameras on the market today

buying guide
Silhouette of moorhen in reed bed
Photographer Robert Canis spent 30 years shooting one nature reserve: here's what that patience can teach the rest of us

By Tom May Published

Book This one-off print run, built from decades of shooting, is an unspoken rebuke to our location-hopping Insta culture.

Book
A dense, dark storm cloud looms over a long line of silhouetted marchers carrying American flags as they walk along a ridge during the Selma to Montgomery march.
The 1965 Selma photograph with no faces in it: why James Karales' camera turned away from the hero shot and focused on the sky

By Tom May Published

Behind the photo This shot from the Presence touring show proves that the most powerful documentary image isn't always the closest

Behind the photo
Man using Ugreen Nexode 100W USB C Wall Charger to charge his MacBook, phone and tablet simultaneously
The best MacBook chargers in 2026: alternative chargers for MacBooks and laptops

By Gareth Bevan Last updated

buying guide The best MacBook chargers are lighter than Apple's official ones, and often cheaper too!

buying guide
Man video editing on computer
The best keyboard for video editing in 2026

By Ben Andrews Last updated

Buying Guide Avoid RSI and work faster, with the best keyboards for video editing

Buying Guide
A large sign reading "I am an American" hangs in the window of a shuttered Oakland grocery store the day after Pearl Harbor, as a 1940s car sits in the foreground.
From the Great Depression to Japanese-American internment, Dorothea Lange's camera bore witness to some of the darkest moments in US history

By Tom May Published

NEWS A forthcoming retrospective celebrates one of the most morally urgent photographers of the 20th century

NEWS
Charli xcx leans back against a pale wall wearing a white crop top and dark jeans, her dark curly hair caught mid-movement, her gaze directed downward; photographed by Harley Weir, 2024.
This Charli XCX portrait by Harley Weir refuses to be a typical pop star photo, and that's precisely why it now belongs in London's National Portrait Gallery

By Tom May Published

News It captures one of Britain's most culturally significant musicians in a moment that feels unusually intimate

News
A wheelchair user in a pink sweatshirt holds a sign reading "How about us?" beside a red London Leyland bus, as bystanders look on from the pavement.
The photographer who documented Britain's disability rights movement from the inside has finally been recognized, and his archive is free to use

By Tom May Published

News Keith Armstrong spent decades capturing protests that changed British law forever

News
Black and white photograph of children playing on a rope swing wedged between two brick walls, with two more boys crouched nearby covering their faces, taken in Byker, Tyneside, in 1976.
Chris Killip spent months living in deindustrialised communities in North-East England, photographing some of the most intimate images of 1970s and '80s Britain – using a huge camera that was never built for the job

By Tom May Published

News A new edition of his book North reveals how the wrong tool for candid photography became his greatest asset.

News
Two men in long coats and boots pull a large metal tub across a grassy hillside to transport a sick ram, while several other sheep watch from the background.
James Ravilious and Chris Chapman spent 50 years photographing farms, weddings and village halls in the same corner of rural England – yet neither ever saw the other as competition

By Tom May Published

Their work highlights how great documentary photography comes from patience, trust and staying in one place

Galleries and Exhibitions
Black and white photograph of a woman pushing a pram along a bleak industrial road, with factory chimneys smoking in the background.
This new gothic-themed exhibition has a lot to teach photographers about making the ordinary feel unsettling

By Tom May Published

NEWS Featuring work by Martin Parr, Don McCullin and Jo Spence, 'Dark Tales' highlights how documentary work can make the everyday feel gothic, without ever staging a scare

NEWS
Three small dogs in coats stand side by side on a London pavement, all looking directly at the camera.
A hyena, a fur seal and an elephant in the city: Leica photographer Alan Schaller finds humor, tension and black-and-white beauty in the animals that live among us

By Tom May Published

NEWS The London photographer's second monograph is the first title from his new imprint, Irys Publishing

NEWS
A polar bear leaps between ice floes over open water, its leaping form perfectly mirrored in the still surface below.
This gorgeous photo of a polar bear bounding across the ice offers a masterclass in deciding whether to shoot in color or black-and-white

By Tom May Published

NEWS Sue Flood and Ian Dawson's new exhibition, Midnight Sun, follows a logic that every photographer should study

NEWS
A grainy photogravure of several coated, hatted figures standing in silhouette on a pavement, their long shadows stretching across the ground beneath a glowing street sign.
Long before Bill Brandt, this 1920s postcard salesman worked out how to photograph London after dark without a tripod. A reissued photobook reveals just how he did it

By Tom May Published

BOOK Back in 1924, Fred Judge ditched the tripod, built his own camera and leaned on lamp posts to solve a problem that photographers still wrestle with today

BOOK
A candid, colorful 1960s photograph capturing a group of adults and a young boy laughing together while sitting with their legs dangling over a concrete sea wall at a public bathing area.
How do you define photography in a single sentence? No-one can agree – so this new book charts 200 years of it instead

By Tom May Published

NEWS An impressive new volume from Thames & Hudson features 320 pages of the landmark images that built the medium

NEWS
A model wearing black-framed smart glasses with built-in camera sensors looking directly at the camera.
Samsung's stylish new smart glasses look so utterly normal, you'd never guess they contained a camera – but does that cross the creepy line?

By Tom May Published

News They look remarkably like regular glasses, which is either their greatest strength or their biggest problem

News
A weathered, gray wooden two-story farmhouse stands derelict and decaying in the middle of a barren, harvested cornfield under an overcast sky.
Ben Marcin photographed dozens of abandoned houses in exactly the same way for 20 years, and his new book is a masterclass in editing

By Tom May Last updated

News This new photobook about Baltimore's stubborn, solitary buildings offers an important lesson about organising a series

News
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