Venus offered two excellent apparitions for northern hemisphere observers in 1996 ~ the first half of the year was a high evening elongation, followed by the last June inferior conjunction before two transits in 2004 and 2012, then the second half of the year was an excellent show as the morning star.  This second half is ending now as Venus gets lower and lower into the dawn, but here we were able to catch it in Virgo while it is still in a dark sky.  I must have taken this picture from the mountains because the sky is dark enough to see the zodiacal light.  Unannotated image.