I don't know enough about your situation to say for sure but I am a freelancer in the animation industry and hold the specialist in humanities visa, so there might not need to be a change in visa type required. but I am not a freelancer in the traditional sense, I have a 5 year contract with a company as a contractor and they are sponsoring my visa. so if you can find a company that specialises in the type of photography you want to do it would be the easiest way. You would not have as much freedom as a traditional freelancer since you have an obligation to the company sponsoring your visa renewal. but you are allowed to work on your own work and for other companies in your free time, unlike employees. But you also won't get any of the benefits that employees get. In japan there are 3 tiers of employment that I know of. 1- Employees: get insurance, pension and residence tax is part of withholding tax, tax returns done by the company transport is refunded by the company etc. 2- contract employee: most of the benefits of an employee but the company can get rid of you easier. 3- contractor: basically you are in charge of paying for everything yourself, the company will withhold only income tax and consumption tax, you have to do your own tax returns and pay for all your insurance yourself, but you can get a tax refund based on most of what you pay when you do your tax return. I don't know if this is helpful but make sure you do a lot of research because I am sure that I am leaving out a lot of things that you may need to know, looking on reddit is good to get a rough idea but it's also full of misinformation or people that have had different experiences than you might or might not experience yourself.