Venus is in the early stages of one of its January to August apparitions, and the current position in Aquarius shows it just beginning to emerge out of the sunset glow into dark skies. This type of apparition is similar to 1991, 1999 2015, and 2023.
Strangely, I can't recall from where I took this picture; the only locations I can think of are across the Potomac or Rappahannock Rivers, looking to the west, but I don't recognize the scene on the far bank.
I took this picture with my old Nikon FE2 and Nikkor 55 mm f/1.2 lens using slide film. It was just mounted on a static tripod with no tracking; often I piggybacked the camera on one of my telescopes but for this kind of shot, that would not have worked well.
The slide was scanned in 2025 and then sharpened with brightness and contrast adjustments made to create the result. I estimate that the picture was taken about an hour after sunset, looking in a west-southwest direction; Venus has an azimuth of 248° this evening, which makes it 22° to the left of due west.
As a counterpoint to the interesting planet action in the morning sky recently with Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury, our evening sky is also offering an entertaining grouping with Venus, Mercury and even barely visible Uranus lined up in the west. All residing in Aquarius the Water Bearer, we appropriately see this group suspended over a river, most likely the Potomac or Rappahannock. Venus is magnitude -3.93, Mercury -0.82, and Uranus is +5.93 this evening. Unannotated image