Between 1908 and the mid-1920s Brigman frequently vacationed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where she exhibited her photos at several of the seaside salons. She began to study etching in Carmel under James Blanding Sloan and exhibited her prints “of fine design and feeling” in April 1925 with other Sloan students at the League of Fine Arts in Berkeley and at the City of Paris Galleries in San Francisco. In August 1926 her photos were paired with the block prints of William S. Rice in a show at Morcom's Gallery in Oakland; the following March she exhibited her photographs at the Fine Arts Society of San Diego. In the summer of 1928 she made the first of several lengthy trips to Covina in southern California. The following March she submitted a photograph of “figures in a somber dance” to the Exhibition of Dance Art at San Francisco's East-West Gallery.