While some institutions of higher education teach their introductory photography courses in the traditional black and white format, many are switching to color. The focus of this study was to explore the reasoning behind the decision of institutions of higher education to either continue teaching the introductory photography course in black and white or make the switch to color.
Higher education level introductory photography educators were chosen as participants for the study and responded to a survey created by the researcher. The survey included questions regarding their opinions between the two color formats in the introductory classroom, what format they currently instruct with, why they use that format, and who made that decision.
Results from the survey showed that the higher education level introductory photography educators preferred to teach using black and white photography to color. They also preferred the digital format to film. Interestingly enough, they survey showed that the educators associated black and white photography with film cameras and associated color photography with digital cameras. These results seemed to contradict with the previous results, making for an intriguing conclusion.