Since 1998, Scales has been a photography editor at The New York Times and is currently editing The Sunday Review and The Book Review. He also edits the New York Times Sunday Review photography column, “Exposures.”

Scales’ photographs have been exhibited at museums throughout the United States and Europe as well as the permanent collections of MoMA, The George Eastman House and The Baltimore Museum of Art. His work has appeared in numerous photography magazines, books and anthologies,

He has been an adjunct professor of photography at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University. He and his wife, writer and painter Meg Henson, own the image archive, HSP Archive.