They stood on benches, knelt on pebbled paths, and balanced tripods on jagged rock outcroppings, all in attempts to capture a lasting image of the billowing nylon fabric strung throughout Central Park.

For the throngs of visitors to Central Park this weekend, the sight of 7,500 steel gates woven through 23 miles of narrow pathways is a moment worth remembering.

According to the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, visitors who ask one of the special Gates monitors -hired by the artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude – may receive one of 1,000,000 souvenir swatches of fabric they are handing out.

Many other visitors, seeking a different sort of memento, came armed with tripods, wide-angle lenses, and shoulder bags packed with film, to help preserve the sight of the spectacle.

“The contrast between the bleakness of the winter and the bright orange color is just beautiful,” an Upper West Side resident, Jane Taylor, said yesterday as she arranged her tripod under one of the gates for a shot. “The curtains play wonderful tricks with light and shadow.”

After more than 25 years of petitioning the city for permission, Christo and Jeanne-Claude finally saw their project “The Gates, Central Park, New York, 1979-2005” blossom Saturday as Mayor Bloomberg unfurled the fabric on the first gate.

The $21 million installation, paid for by the artists, fans out through the park for 16 days only, before the 16-foot-high gates are dismantled and removed.

The ephemeral quality of the installation seems to be a selling point.

“I never end up going to the MoMA because I know it will always be there,” a systems analyst and amateur photographer from Long Island City, Jim Bell, said.

“But this, I know, will disappear, and that lends it a sense of urgency,” he said lifting his hefty zoom lens and focusing on one of the gates.

Others are enchanted by another kind of impermanence. the ever-changing appearance of the fabric as it shifts and twists in the wind illuminated by the sun.

“I want to come back and experience it in the morning and then at dusk,” an interior designer from Chelsea, Suzanne Shapiro, said. “I like playing with the shadows and seeing how they change.”

Seeking another sort of change at the temporary installation are vendors of souvenirs and memorabilia, such as maps, T-shirts, and hand signed art prints. These salespeople are working for the artists, who said proceeds would be donated to Nurture New York’s Nature and the Central Park Conservancy.

In the next two weeks the installation is expected to draw crowds in the hundreds of thousands – and some visitors are arguing for a longer show.

“Why two weeks?” an art teacher from upstate Wappingers Falls, John Kalogero, said. “Let’s leave it up for the spring and see how it reacts as the park blossoms.”