I finally researched the difference between freelancer photographer and self-employed photographer.

Self-employed means a broader and bigger thing. 

• you don’t trade your time for money. that’s the main thing
• your treat yourself like a brand and build a personal branding
• you have or yet-to-have regular helpers (with website, social media, assistants, i.e. freelancers you hire to take some workload from you) 

• you have a system of several steams of client flow and cash flow and when one is down, you backed up,  so
• your stress levels are a bit lower but not that low as 9-5 employed

Both freelancer and self-employed person 

• can have a system in getting clients (cold-emailing, reels, SEO)
• can have a signature style and personal branding 
• can have all different kinds of projects bits of this and that
• can have 80% projects they don’t like but still take to pay bills
• can have several returning clients who sustain their welfare.

However freelancer is more about these: 

• trade their time for money
• relying more on word of mouth, job aggregators (airtasker, upwork, fiverr), social media presence, 
  
• live from project to project in short-term basis, when there’s a need to manually look for another project and 1 week — 2-6 months in advance booked,

and overall cons:

you are alone in these and even having a company as a team, you are still irreplaceable. 

Self-employed

- can take a time off still having some systems running and assistants/passive income working

Freelancer 

- as they trade their time for money, it means a full stop in income and projects

P.S.

Let’s not forget there are successful self-employment and unsuccessful. There can be a freelancer who does their job that good that can take a year sabbatical and won’t notice the difference (I do think they exist), and there can be a self employed having all the systems running, but the services and products are so unpopular or of a bad quality or marketing isn’t working well, that they have more losses than gain. 

But yeah, Self-employed is kinda more serious than freelancing. 

AAAaand just a post scriptum thoughts on being 9-5 employed

• you’re more stable
• your stress levels are 3 out of 10 about money 
• you don’t have to spend time and effort on looking for clients
• you have a company in faces of colleagues

Cons:

• you are told what to do and projects 80% what you don’t like but they pay bills
• your stress level is 7 out of 10 about not doing your own thing
• you have to interact with colleagues (depends if you like it or not)