The exponential growth of multimedia information and the development of various communication media generated new problems at various levels including the rate of flow of information, problems of storage and management. The difficulty which arises is no longer the existence of information but rather the access to this information. In this paper, an approach to semantic multimedia information retrieval will be presented. We will address the question how traditional approach of multimedia information retrieval can be enhanced to provide users with relevant information in due time without being flooded with irrelevant data. To account for the inherent ambiguity in multimedia information, annotation process is introduced in the information retrieval process. Annotation is used to add the needed attributes without changing the structure and/or the schema of the database. This paper will be organised as follows: "traditional multimedia information systems overview" presents the richness of multimedia information and the weaknesses of tradinonnal approach."Semantic approach" adresses the issues of annotation process and information use context. Under the proposed approach, ontology are used to capture genral and contexual knoweldge of domain.