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).
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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?
Marco Daniel
- 95,681
\clearpagebefore\begin{figure}– Marco Daniel Jun 02 '12 at 13:53[H]specifier provided byfloat. – egreg Jun 02 '12 at 14:00\raggedbottom(cf. this question, possible duplicate). – dgs Jun 02 '12 at 14:47