Prevent vertical distribution of paragraphs over entire page

Question

It seems it tries to fill an entire A4, as the image of the next page is too big. So it puts a lot of space between the paragraphs. But, I'd much rather have a big chunk of white at the bottom of the first page: as it looks now, it looks like there are stuff missing (for example figures).

Answer 1

Based on your given information I guess you are using a document class like book. By default the command \flushbottom is active which will balance the complete text at the top and bottom of a page.

If you get a page break the text before will be balanced. A simple \clearpage before you start the environment figure will solve the problem.

The behaviour can be reproduced very simple if you are using the float specifier H provided by the package float:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{showframe}
\usepackage{mwe}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{float}
\begin{document}
\chapter{foo}
\blindtext

\blindtext

\begin{figure}[H]
\includegraphics[width=.48\linewidth]{example-image-a}\hfill
\includegraphics[width=.48\linewidth]{example-image-b}
\caption{MWE to demonstrate how to place to images side-by-side}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

So I recommend to use the specifiers !htb. More information about the float algorithm and the specifiers are given in the great answer of Frank Mittelbach:

How to influence the position of float environments like figure and table in LaTeX?