Storm light over Bora Bora's lagoon is a brief and unreliable gift: the sun drops below the horizon or finds a break in the clouds and illuminates the undersides of the storm from below, turning the sky into something that does not photograph believably. This particular event lasted approximately twelve minutes before the clouds closed again — the turquoise of the lagoon holding its color beneath a sky that had turned deep amber and gray-purple. The shallow water over the reef reads as pale green against the deeper passages of the lagoon, the whole span from pale turquoise to storm-dark sky held in a single frame. French Polynesia at its most dramatic is not the postcard blue-sky version; it is this.