Rick Barrentine of Johns Creek has been draped in honor, if not money, by the new American flag postage stamp.

The United States Postal Service picked a photo that Barrentine took of the Stars and Stripes, which will be reproduced, stuck on envelopes or collected about 2 billion times in the coming year, said David Failor, the postal services’ director of stamp services.

Barrentine said, “I told my wife, I wish I could get 1/1,000th of a cent for each stamp.”

That would have been a cool $20,000. Instead, he got $70.

“That’s no big deal,” Barrentine demurred. “The honor of being on the stamp is really cool.”

The stamp went on sale Friday. Barrentine was unaware that the postal service selected his photo until a stamp collector called him a couple of months ago.

“She said, ‘I want to talk to you about your stamp.’ And I said, ‘What stamp?’” he recalled.

Barrentine, creative director of Quadras Integrated, a design agency, had snapped some patriotic photos in 2003 and put them up for sale on a Web site he freelances for. One was, as the postal service put it, “a softly folded flag, [which] features most prominently the starry blue field, with red-and-white stripes occupying the remaining space.”

The post office purchased the image off the site, but Barrentine was not notified. The stamp collector led him to the new stamp on the postal service Web site.

“I said, ‘No way,’” he said upon its discovery.

Failor said the postal service always has a U.S. flag stamp mixed in with the images of flowers, animals, pieces of art and famous Americans.

“It’s the bread and butter stamp of the postal inventory. We are always looking for a new design,” he said.

Someone found Barrentine’s photo and submitted it to the stamp review committee, who chose it.

Barrentine still has the flag. It hangs in front of his house. He plans to keep it there, even though it is about to be famous.

“It’s still getting good use,” he said. “When we get finished with it, I’ll probably take it down and keep it.”

See the stamp: http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/allnews.htm. Then click on the Feb. 24 press release, “2009 Price-Change Stamps Unveiled”.