An empty cigarette packet blowing down the street, the sun’s rays shining through the clouds hovering low in the sky above, an elderly woman with a limp in her right leg crossing the quiet street ahead.
I often wonder if some writers do not go overboard. As a reader do I need to know it was a pack of Pal-Mall or whatever brand of cigarettes that was blowing down the street. Is there enough information to tell me it is morning noon or night, that information was likely present in a previous sentence so as a mood or weather element it works, unless it is important to the future of the story the description of the woman is enough, details can be added later as needed.
So what do I see and feel from that line? It would all be based on the biases that I had from growing up and from how I saw the world.
There is a twenty something young man walking down a cobbled street in a tightly packed area of maybe brownstone homes, he is walking not with a hurried step but as if in deep thought, as the empty cigarette pack blows by he glances up, feels the chill of the building breeze, and notices the elderly woman ahead limping but with a steady gate as if trying to get to shelter before the storm builds any further.
Now you did not mention the type of road, or street, or if it was in town or in the country, these are things my mind could fill in. You did not mention a building storm, but a blowing empty cigarette pack low clouds and sun rays do for me indicate a storm, my mind could go on to also see it as a coastal town perhaps a mid sized town for import export, and fishing activities.
So yes sometimes a writer needs to let the readers mind see and fill in the details on it own. I am sure other people would see things differently from that one sentence.
There's a fine line between describing a scene to a reader versus setting the backdrop. Go too much into detail and you run the risk of losing the original point of the narrative. So yes, going overboard is easy to stumble into.
My example was simple one to illustrate visual triggers whilst reading, partly as an aid for easing the process of writing. I see no reason why a short couple sentence should set the tone and scene perfectly, giving the reader adequate enough information to fill in the rest.
And that is really all that is needed, the reader can fill in the missing parts based on all the background previous stuff.