Air France's annual advertising campaign is one of the most prestigious in the world and has won numerous awards. Put together for the last 12 years by the BETC advertising agency, the campaign has featured work by Steve Klein, Nadav Kander, Joel Sternfeld, Jonathan de Villiers, Stefan Ruiz and John Offenbach. The accompanying TV campaigns, meanwhile, have been shot by luminaries such as Michel Gondry and Hou Hsiao Hsien.

BETC first won the commission back in 1999 with a pitch that suggested 'opening out' the carrier's advertising to emphasise the pleasures of comfortable travel and the glamorous locations it brings in reach. 'For years airline advertising had been very closed, emphasising the offers - the prices or the shape of the chairs,' says Remi Babinet, the founder of BETC and managing director of the parent communications company Havas.

'We wanted to explode that and position Air France very differently, so we proposed ads with a big expanse of sky, very little text and the plane as just a little detail. Air travel can be a stressful experience so we wanted to emphasise calm, tranquility and well being, referencing activities such as yoga, lying down and hairdressing.'

Solar light

Steve Klein shot that first campaign and 12 years later Babinet and BETC are still working with Air France, designing chairs and music for the company as well as maintaining the core brand campaign. The print ads are still underlined by the same central sense of serenity and visual simplicity, and are still often dominated by the sky - in particular the shade of blue, and quality of light, of a really sunny day. Babinet describes this light as 'soleil' ('solar light') and, says Offenbach, any digression from it generates a lot of discussion. 'For the campaign I worked on they really wanted an azure sky,' he says. 'A pale or grey sky was heavily discussed. We even made sure the skate ramp model was made of metal, not concrete, so that it reflected the sky.'

The plane, however, has disappeared from the shots, replaced by a pictogram of the seat number in 2006 when Jonathan de Villiers took over the campaign. His images emphasise the locations air travel opens up, as well as an ideal vision of passenger comfort. In one of his shots, for example, a young woman wrapped in a blanket sits on a slim jetty. The seat number superimposed over her head indicates that the woman, and her airplane blanket, are as they would be on a flight, but the surroundings represent her comfort and the location she's flying to. In another shot, a man lies back in long grass with his hands behind his head, his seat number again superimposed on top.

'The campaign was shot in Cape Town,' says de Villiers. 'It needed to look European, or at least that it could have been shot in Europe - Air France is Air France after all, they can't have ads that look very foreign, although some ambiguity is good. We considered shooting in Brazil and rejected it because the foliage was too exotic, and ruled out New Zealand because it was too far, and because Air France doesn't actually fly there. We settled on Cape Town and this lake was an ideal location, because it could also have been in France, or Scandinavia, or Scotland. For the shot of the man lying down in the grass, and there was a lot of discussion about the texture of the grass.

'Most important for BETC was the atmosphere and the principle of the thing - these images are going to be used all over the world and on big posters, so visually they need to be strong,' he adds. 'They need the images to be simple and very graphic but also to communicate.'

BETC ran the seat number pictogram concept until 2008, when it refreshed the campaign again by commissioning French photographer Camilla Akrans to shoot images with an aeroplane vapour trail, effortlessly melded into the elegant passengers' lives. 'The plane has been removed altogether but it's indicated by visual lines,' explains Babinet. 'The heel or the shoe, the corset lace and so on symbolise the plane by the trace it leaves behind. It's an oblique reference and it's quite revolutionary - we're talking about air travel, but there's no aeroplane.'

Akrans' images also include the sense of space and clean colour palette synonymous with Air France ads, however - and Babinet chose her for the campaign because he knew her style would be a good fit. 'She captures contrast very well, from very bright light to very dramatic shadows,' he says. 'Her images recall old prints and old-style glamour. They're somewhere between photography and graphic design.'

The sense of glamour was essential to Babinet, because he sees it as so indicative of French style. For this reason he often opts for fashion photographers who can provide the requisite flair. 'All national airlines reference characteristics of their country,' he says. 'Look at American Airlines or British Airways. The Air France ads do the same but in a very subtle way. They're not blue, white and red but you see the values that France holds dear.' Plus, he adds, the images need to be contemporary, and fashion photographers know how to tap into visual styles better than almost anyone else.

In action

As Babinet's suggests, BETC thinks each campaign through thoroughly, going through months of pre-production discussion via conference calls and meetings. It is then closely storyboarded, and the clothes the models wear and the props, furniture and architecture featured in the shot are painstakingly flown to the location, if necessary. This sometimes takes on epic proportions - Offenbach's skate ramp model was 4x3x3ft, and it was flown from the UK to South Africa. The whole process takes about six months, of which the shoot takes up about 10 days or so. 'They're certainly a client that likes to talk about everything!' laughs Offenbach, but both he and Ruiz add that, once on the shoot, they were left to their own devices.

'I scouted the locations with my team and we emailed images back and forth,' says Ruiz. 'But they gave me the freedom to shoot in the style I favour. I guess that's why they hired me. It was quite a big shoot - there were about 15 people there, including two assistants, the team from the ad agency (usually the account handler, the writer and the creative director) and representatives from Air France (another three people) - but I was able to block it out.'

'We want the photographers' particular style,' confirms Babinet. 'We want their light and the team that helps them make it.'

In Ruiz and de Villiers' cases he wasn't able to cluster around the monitor on shoot either - both photographers shot their campaigns on 5x4 film, using Polaroids or the Fujifilm equivalent along the way if necessary. This was both a qualitative and practical decision, says Ruiz, explaining: 'The bill board size lends itself to that format,' says Ruiz. '35mm or small digital cameras wouldn't capture the level of detail. And I think the style of shooting large format also fits well with Air France's style - you have to shoot slowly on a tripod, so you create more formal, rigid images.'

The photographers have to consider the final format of the ads as they go along, as they will be used in a variety of sizes and dimensions, from a landscape-shape billboard to an upright single page ad. In some shots this is reasonably easy to achieve, says Offenbach, with motifs arranged in a crucifix that can be cropped vertically or run across a spread. But at other times it can't be done with a single image, meaning that the same scene needs to be shot in a few different ways. Another restriction is the text and logo, which although minimal will still always be there. 'We sometimes took Polaroids and literally drew on them,' says Offenbach. 'Sometimes it's easy and quite obvious where the text should go, but at other times there's lots of playing around.'

In Offenbach's campaign the plane needed to be added in post production and he also did some colour work on his shots but for the most part, perhaps unsurprisingly given the amount of planning that goes into them, the images require very little post-production. But whether it's a lot or a little, the photographer sits in on the retouching. 'They have a pretty clear idea of what they want from the images,' says de Villiers. 'But they want the photographer to make the idea work.'

And that, says Ruiz, is what runs through the whole production - the photographers are part of a team, but their work and their opinions are valued. 'BETC is very respectful and very knowledgeable about photography,' he says. 'I'm glad to have worked with them. I'm not the biggest profile photographer to have worked on the Air France campaign by any means, so it makes me feel good to have my work alongside photographers' I really like and respect.'

'It's an investment in quality,' says Babinet. 'Air France represents France, so we recommend that they are represented by the best, the most cutting-edge photographers. They have been in full agreement with us for 12 years.'

Air France ads over the last 12 years

1999: Steven Klein

2001: Nicolas Moore / Steven Klein / Lars Tunbjork

2003: Nathaniel Goldberg

2004: Nadav Kander / Stefan Ruiz

2005: John Offenbach

2006: Jonathan de Villiers

2008: Camilla Akrans