The eight participants of The perfect picture in Argentina are thoroughly, almost jealously pampered. ‘Flying all over the Atlantic’ (shouts presenter Tijl Beckand) to the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. All a professional Nikon camera with a nice set of lenses (or was Canon the sponsor?, sorry – the brand barely comes into the picture). Hotel in a hip neighbourhood. Practical assistance from Beckand and reviews by accomplished entertainment photographer William Rutten. He judges the work of the eight famous Dutch people, who explore their talent in the field of photography in competition.
The knockout race in the Argentinean setting of the RTL 4 program has a pleasant combination of friendly mellowness (which is in the DNA of every celebrity in a group), a certain scoring drive (no one wants to be judged as the worst) and some education in photography. Not only technique and composition, but also choice of subject, decor and improvisation are discussed.
In the first episode of this season there are two assignments: to take a street photo with Argentinians in their daily lives. And: leave a silver design jewel with a model shine After all, the name Argentina is derived from argentum, Latin for silver. Well, it’s a thread.
There is momentum in the assignments, one hour per participant for the perfect street photo. The celebrities go out in pairs, with the complicating factor that they have a local in the photo should be replaced by their occasional partner. BN’er pretends to be Argentinian in front of the camera, so. Daphne Bunskoek (presenter) disguises herself as a waitress on the instructions of Thomas Berge (singer). Babette van Veen (actress and singer) photographs Renée Soutendijk (actress and film icon) in the mirror of a women’s hairdressing salon, who in turn captures her buddy Babette as a bum, lying on a piece of cardboard.
That forced urge to push the celebrities into the frame – in the program perhaps their raison d’être – is detrimental to the The perfect picture† Why should the contact between a photographing celebrity and a local not lead to an interesting meeting and picture? So if you’re flying all over the ocean anyway, why not a little more cultural cross-pollination?
Nevertheless, in the wake of the aforementioned celebrities and Jochem van Gelder (presenter), Roxanne Kwant (online personality), Tim den Besten (programme maker) and Maurice Lede (presenter), it is a joyful wandering through the South American metropolis. The Argentines willingly conform to the sometimes bizarre desires of the photographers. If someone wants to borrow a motorcycle for a while to have a celebrity figure as a courier. Or when a woman who is walking a dog is asked to let a celebrity crawl across the street on a leash, as if he were her second dog.
No one is sent home “linea recta” after episode 1 as Beckand threatened beforehand. It keeps the tension, which is bearable in any case, in there for a while.