Jupiter and Venus gathered in late summer in the evening sky but never reached conjunction because Venus began retrograding heading for inferior conjunction before meeting up with Jupiter. Compare this scene to a similar one in September 2018, which is 24 years into the future from this point (three cycles of Venus and two cycles of Jupiter).
On this date, Jupiter shined at magnitude -1.85 and dia-meter of 33.0", while Venus was magnitude -4.48, having a diameter of 31.2". Their separation at the time of my photo was 8°59'57".
The ecliptic makes a shallow angle with the horizon dur-ing summer and autumn even-ings in the northern hemi-sphere, but the angle on our picture between Jupiter and Venus is much steeper; we can see the reason is that Venus is well south of the ecliptic during the closing phases of these apparitions (1986 - 1994 - 2002 - 2010 - 2018).