Resolving Huge White Space on Mobile Portrait: Seeking Advice

I have a Team 12 that works fine in all breakpoints, except mobile portrait. There it adds HUGE white space above each element. It turns out it's the 66% padding on the image wrapper that causes this. If I remove that on the mobile portrait breakpoint, the problem goes away. My understanding is that that padding is used to ensure consistent image proportions? I'm hesitant about going ahead with removing it. It feels like I'm fiddling with something I don't understand. What's the best way forward with this?