It's a bit of a Cinderella story -- a young woman, in love with Bruce Springsteen's music as a teen, takes several photographs of her idol in concert. A little while later, a magazine asks to use one for a story it's publishing. It was the start of a wildly successful career as a photographer for Debra L. Rothenberg. Some 30 years later, Rothenberg has become the Bruce Springsteen photographer. Her new book, Bruce Springsteen in Focus 1980-2012, is a visual record of her 30-plus years of shooting Springsteen both on and off stage.

Rothenberg stood in the cold all night to get tickets to her first Springsteen concert. "Before [that], I had only been to one concert in my life -- Barry Manilow when I was 13!" she tells us from her New York home.

Her first photo of the musician appeared in New Jersey Monthly Magazine in September of 1981. "My oldest brother, Randy, was a writer at the time for NJ Monthly and heard they were doing a story on Bruce. When they heard I had photos, they called me and asked if they could use one. It was exciting.

"It's so funny looking back on that photo now -- after putting the negative in the enlarger and putting the enlarger all the way up to the ceiling, Bruce was the size of a penny. I thought it was going to be the best photo I [would ever take] of him. Six months later I was in the 14th row with my best friend, Marti, with Bruce staring right into my camera."

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