Brigman's career quickly accelerated at home. After her success at San Francisco's Third Photographic Salon (1903), she opened a teaching studio in Berkeley which attracted many university co-eds. Soon her allegorical studies appeared in "Photograms of the Year" and her portraits of California celebrities, such as the rakish Herman Whitaker, were featured in two issues of "Sunset" magazine. A partial list of her California exhibitions, which were reviewed extensively in the press between 1904 and 1908, includes the: Fourth and Fifth Annual Exhibitions of the Oakland Art Fund sponsored by the Starr King Fraternity; Palette, Lyre and Pen Club of Oakland (solo exhibit); Vickery, Atkins & Torrey Gallery in San Francisco (solo exhibit); Arts and Crafts Exhibition in Los Angeles; Paul Elder Gallery in San Francisco (solo exhibit); California Guild of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco; Oakland Club Room (solo show); First and Second Annuals of the Berkeley Art Association; Alameda County Exposition in Oakland's Idora Park; Ebell Clubhouse in Oakland; and Del Monte Art Gallery in Monterey. She often lectured and on one occasion in October 1906 she summarized her philosophy on the "Art of Photography" at a well-attended event for Berkeley's Town and Gown Club. Her celebrity status was confirmed in July 1907 when Emily J. Hamilton assessed Brigman and many of her famous photographs in a full-page Sunday magazine article for the "San Francisco Call" entitled “Lens Studies of a Photo-Secessionist.” In 1907 Brigman completed eight illustrations for William E. Henley's poem "I Am the Captain of My Soul". Her “artists’ teas” in Oakland and Berkeley became occasions when the Bay Area's famous painters, literati and actors mingled; among the prominent local photographers habitually in attendance were Oscar Maurer, Laura Adams Armer, Emily H. Pitchford, Adelaide Hanscom Leeson, and Oscar V. Lange. Her popularity with the public was slightly tarnished when her famous study of an undraped female nude, "The Soul of the Blasted Pine", was criticized, sidelined and then removed from the 1908 Idora Park Exposition for being a vulgar photograph of a “scrawny dame.” Brigman angrily withdrew the image from the display.