Unlike many of her Pictorialist contemporaries, Brigman did not use studio props but employed real backgrounds to set her photographs. Nor did she rely upon combination printing to achieve her painterly interpretations of the human figure in nature. Edwin Jackson, a realist photographer of the period, attempted to have The Soul of the Blasted Pine banned from exhibition. He said of her work, Mrs. Brigman takes an unclothed scrawney dame...who looks as if she had not jerried to a square meal for a month, fixes her upon a piece of macadam somewhere, photographs the thrilling scene and calls it 'Squeal of the Rocks.' (Pictorialism in California, p. 16)