Go stand there with your iPhone. Don’t stray. Snap photos of anyone or anything interesting crossing your path.

These were my self-imposed orders as I walked up the stairs to the running path at the E. 90th Street entrance to Central Park.

The locale looks out onto the expansive reservoir, and at by hour the August sun had dipped near the horizon. It cast its fiery but dying golden reserves on the apartment buildings that line Central Park West, with the twin towers of the Eldorado commanding front-and-center attention across the serene water.

At least for a few more minutes, this natural and man-made backdrop was all set up, as dark threatened to quickly take hold.

Patiently, I stood waiting to capture subjects that came in and out of this ideal scene — a wedge of swimming ducks, soaring birds, families lining the wrought iron gate, breeze-animated reeds and tree leaves, a photographer checking out her images.

Each of these silhouetted subjects, as well as the play of sunlight off the water’s subtle ripples, added their individual flavors to this same but gorgeous scene.