Altered Reality

My bank of photographs grows daily despite my best attempts at culling them. I know this is pretty standard in the digital age, take 300 photos and pick the best 1. Problem is, what do you do with the other 200 'ok' photos after deleting the obvious duds - after all, once they are gone, they are gone. Stick them in storage never to look at them again?

When it comes to photography, I'm a noob, but one thing I strive for is authentic photo. With this arises a dilemma. How much can a photo be tweaked or altered? If you have noticed - some of the photos on here have been put through the pop-art filter on my camera (makes all the colours vivid and people orange like oompa-loompas). Guadalajara has been pretty grey - so it's been difficult capturing colours...hence the filter (I could do the same in post production but frankly I'm a little lazy).

It bugs me it isn't accurately representing reality and I feel dishonest if I go in and really tweak things...it's just a point and shoot, so maybe the question is moot as they don't really accurately capture things. It will persist as get more and more into photograph (I'm already thinking about a new camera, despite mine being less than a year old... :-) )

With that in mind - what about actual 'corrections'? I don't generally alter photographs but find myself really tempted to. The Panorama function on the Olympus TG-3 is primitive at best (Olympus needs to look to the iPhone)...so there are frequently errors in the pictures. Is it cool to correct those? What if I just started to delete things like billboards, garbage and tourists? :-)

Do or don't? Here is an example (check the side street/curb near gf)

Altered

Attempt one

Attempt two