I do agree there is a lot of white space around the author/title area. I’ll keep this feedback in mind next time I work on the component and see if I can come up with something.
I’m not 100% sure what you mean here. The header will switch to include the title/breadcrumbs once you scroll down past the image and blog title. You are correct that at the top of the page, it’s not especially obvious, though. I’ll keep this in mind as well.