His work encompasses a huge variety of subjects and topics, but he has largely concentrated on portraits of those in the arts. These include actors (such as Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins); writers (such as Ian McEwan and Iris Murdoch); poets (such as Carol Ann Duffy and Seamus Heaney); artists (such as Grayson Perry and David Hockney); and musicians (such as James Brown and Patti Smith). McCabe also ventured into sports photography, capturing figures in action, such as the table tennis player Li Chen Shi and footballer Diego Maradona. It was as a sports photographer that McCabe was attending the 1985 European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus, but he ended up being a news photographer as he found himself taking the famous but tragic images of the Heysel Stadium disaster.