New members are initially assigned to the Intermediate Skill Level.
Any member may elect to advance from the Intermediate to the Advanced Skill Level once the member has received four (4) Excellence Awards (see Section 6.2) in any given calendar year or six (6) Excellence Awards in any combination of years.

For purposes of Photographer of the Year calculations, once a member is moved to the Advanced Level, the scores for all images that have previously won Honorable mention or Excellence Awards during that Calendar Year are reclibrated as if they had been originally submitted at the Advanced Level.

Any member may choose at any time to compete in the Intermediate Skill Level, but a member cannot compete in both Skill Levels at the same time. Once, however, a member starts to compete in the Intermediate Skill Level, s/he cannot compete again in the Advanced Skill Level until having met afresh the criterion for advancement noted in the previous paragraph.